Palestinian villagers from Rass Karkar and Al Ganiah villages near Ramallah city in the central West Bank along with Israeli and international supporters removed on Thursday midday an Israeli military road block on the main road between the villages and the city of Ramallah.
This road block was installed by Israeli army seven years ago and disconnected the villages from the city of Ramallah, the army said that the road block was to protect a near by illegal Israeli settlement.
The villagers of Rass Karkar and Al Ganiah went to the Israeli court and won against the army, but the army refused to open the road for the local Palestinians, instead troops continued to force people to go from a road to bypass the settlement which takes 1 hour to reach the city of Ramallah, the old road take only 10 mints to get to Ramallah.
today protesters went to the road block and tried to remove it, the Israeli army arrived to the scene and tried to stop the peaceful protesters, eyewitnesses told IMEMC that the army also started to provoke local youth, but the organizers managed to keep the protest peaceful, in the end the local youth managed to remove the road block and Palestinian cars managed to drive on it once again.
The Israeli commander who was at the scene told media sources that the army will close the road again soon. Mohamed one of the local organizers told IMEMC that the people in the village are thinking of making this action of today as a weekly action in order to keep the road open.
Among the people protesting was the Palestinian minister of information Mustafa Al Barghothi, who said that this action today is a start of a campaign to target all the illegal Israeli army checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank.
