The village of Kufur Qaddoum held its weekly non-violent protest against the Israeli Annexation Wall on their land on Friday, and Israeli forces used excessive force against the Palestinian demonstrators.
Dozens of peaceful protesters in the northern occupied West Bank village suffered the effects of tear-gas, while 4 were shot by Israeli soldiers with live ammunition.
Morad Eshteiwi, the coordinator of the ‘Popular Resistance Committee’, told reporters with the Ma’an News Agency that the Israeli military invaded the village, occupied the rooftops of local residents, and fired many tear-gas canisters and rubber-coated steel bullets toward the crowd.
An international photojournalist, Nidal Ishtayeh, from the Chinese News Agency, was one of the four said to have been shot with live ammunition.
The community of Kufur Qaddoum has held protests every Friday for the past 7 years, expressing their opposition to the wall, and settlements.
The expansion of the nearby illegal Israeli colony of Kedumim, in 2003, resulted in the army closing the road to Palestinians, in order to pander to the colonialist settlers, who had taken over the land in violation of both international and Israeli law.
According to Israeli based rights group, B’Tselem, the closure of the main road to Nablus city, caused Palestinians to take a bypass road, which nearly triples the travel time.
The group points out that this is one example of the modern colonialist project that Israel is engaged with in the West Bank, taking over Palestinian land bit by bit through colonial settlement expansion.
