Israeli troops in the city of Hebron, south of the West Bank, cracked down, on Thursday morning, on a peaceful Palestinian protest, by firing dozens of tear-gas canisters and rubber-coated steel bullets.
Local Palestinian sources said that dozens of peaceful demonstrators, including youths, took to the streets of the Alzawy neighborhood, central Hebron, to express their rejection of the planned Israeli annexation of 30 percent of the West Bank, as well as increased Israeli colonist settlers’ attacks on Palestinians living in Hebron.
The sources added that Israeli troops, positioned in the neighborhood and other parts of Hebron city, responded to the local protest by firing dozens of tear-gas canisters and rubber-coated steel bullets, causing many protesters to suffocate.
No other injuries by rubber-coated steel bullets, were reported.
Noteworthy, a number of illegal Israeli colonial settlements have been erected in the Palestinian Hebron city, with Israeli army forces providing protection for the settlers. Hebron has always been considered a flashpoint, given notable Israeli settlers’ assaults on adjacent Palestinian-populated neighborhoods.
Over the past couple of days, many Palestinians, across the West Bank and Gaza Strip, have taken to the streets, to express their outrage at what they consider to be an expansionist and occupying Israeli annexation of large swathes of the West Bank, mainly in the northern Jordan Valley, Al-Aghwar area.
The annexation was expected to be implemented by July 1, yet Israel did not embark on it, as it has been faced with stark international, Arab and Palestinian rejection. Israeli media reports attributed the delay of annexation to deliberations within the Israeli political spectrum, as well as United States’ discussions with the Israeli side.
United States’ President, Donald Trump, presented in January of this year, his so-called deal of the century, which grants approval of Israeli expropriation of a large portion of the West Bank, in return for a disconnected Palestinian state, away from United Nations’ resolutions, which already recognize the whole West Bank, Gaza Strip and the Arab East Jerusalem, as occupied Palestinian territories.
United Nations, Arab and International players, had long-envisioned a two-state solution, based on Israel’s withdrawal from those territories and Palestinians can have a state of their own, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
