The Palestinian Center For Human Rights in Gaza published on Friday its weekly report documenting the Israeli violations and attacks in the occupied Palestinian territories. The report covers the period between February 1 and January 7.The PCHR reported that Israeli soldiers shot and killed six Palestinian civilians, including one child, in the occupied West Bank. One of the casualties was extra-judicially assassinated.
The child was shot and killed in Tulkarem, in the northern part of the West Bank. An Israeli soldier fired one bullet at him when he attempted to escape. Soldiers left the child bleeding to death; the victim was not armed. According to the child’s family, he attempted to escape as the army had repeatedly raided his family home searching for him.
Also, one Palestinian child died of wounds in the Gaza Strip.During the period of the report, seven Palestinian civilians, including one child were injured by Israeli military fire.
The army carried out 40 invasions in several Palestinian cities, villages and refugee camps in the occupied West Bank.
During the attacks, soldiers took prisoner 67 Palestinian residents, including five children and one woman.
Nine civilians, including two children, were taken prisoner at Israeli military roadblocks in the West Bank.
388 Palestinian civilians have been taken prisoner since the beginning of 2007, the center reported.
Troops also demolished one Palestinian house in Nablus, in the northern part of the West Bank.
Soldiers attacked a non-violent weekly protest against the Annexation Wall, in Bilin village near Ramallah, and injured two civilians. A British journalist was also injured in the protest.
One Palestinian civilian was injured when soldiers opened fire at a taxi near Jenin, in the northern part of the West Bank.
Two civilians were shot and injured by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip when troops positioned at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel fired at them. The two civilians were hunting birds nearly 500 meters away from the border.
Israeli bulldozers also destroyed a hill, wooden bridge, and two rooms leading to Magharba gate, one of the gates to Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The center reported that the demolition is part of the Israeli attacks against Muslim and Christian Holy Sites in Jerusalem, and considered the attack as part of the Israeli polices of annexing occupied Jerusalem, and as an act of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population in the city.
The Islamic Waqf department said that this attack aims to confiscate Palestinian lands in order to expand settlements, and stated that the digging is an offensive against holy sites through demolitions and excavations in Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The Center reminds the international community that similar attacks on the civil, political, and cultural rights led to the eruption of a mass popular uprising in the Occupied Palestinian Territories at the end of September 2000, PCHR reported.
The construction of the Israeli Annexation Wall in the West Bank continued, and the Israeli Prime Minister approved moving the Annexation Wall near Ramallah, in the northern part of the West Bank, 5 kilometers further inside West Bank Territory.
Moving the wall inwards comes to include the settlement of Modi’in Elit on the western side of the Wall. This will mean that approximately 20,000 Palestinians will live in enclaves surrounded by the Wall. In addition, the decision increases the length of the Wall by 12 kilometers.
The Gaza Strip and the West Bank remained under strict siege. Dozens of military checkpoints were installed in the West Bank, and main checkpoints linking Palestinian areas in the northern and southern part of the West Bank were repeatedly closed.
The Rafah Border terminal in the southern part of the Gaza Strip was only opened for two hours on February 6, 2007 to allow the delegations of Hamas and Fatah to head to Saudi Arabia.
Only 300 Palestinian casualty cases managed to cross into Egypt or back into the Gaza Strip; dozens of patients remained waiting on the crossing.
The army partially reopened commercial crossings, especially al-Mentar (Karni) crossing, but many goods and medical supplies have been lacking in markets in the Gaza Strip, the center added.
The center also reported that al-Mentar crossing was opened only for one day during the period of the report.
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