RAMALLAH, West Bank — Clad in the traditional black and white checked keffiyeh scarves made popular by their long-deceased leader Yasser Arafat, a group of young Palestinians marched through the West Bank city of Ramallah, their anger palpable.
They carried signs and flags, chanting their disgust at the treatment of their fellow Palestinians in Gaza hours after last week’s deadly blast at the al–Ahli Hospital in Gaza City that killed hundreds of people, according to figures shared by the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Unplacated by a U.S. assessment that the strike had come from within Gaza and not Israel, their fury focused on the patients, caregivers, doctors and displaced people who had lost their lives while seeking shelter.
More protests are expected Friday.
“It’s important to keep in mind that this process of dehumanizing Palestinians isn’t just affecting the population in Gaza but also in the West Bank,” Diana Buttu, a lawyer and former adviser to Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization, told NBC News last week.
The protest in Ramallah was far from isolated. From the city of Nablus in the north to Hebron in the south, young men marched on Israeli checkpoints, throwing stones and burning tires in the streets. The Palestinian Health Ministry said many were met with live ammunition.
“We’re seeing the army shooting randomly at people. We’re also seeing that the army has been going after anyone who has been expressing support with the idea of resistance or otherwise, and the situation is very grave,” Buttu said. “We have nobody who is able to support us.”
The rising violence in the West Bank comes amid Israel’s full-on war against Hamas following the militant group’s unprecedented Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the killing of 1,400 people and the capture of 222 hostages, including children and grandmothers, according to officials in the country.
Israel has since launched intensive air strikes and shelled the Gaza Strip, which it has blockaded with help from Egypt since 2007. More than 7,000 people have been killed in the enclave since the escalation, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. In the West Bank the death toll since Oct. 7 stands at 103, including two Israeli prisoners.
The health ministry blamed Israeli “bullets and missiles” for the deaths. The Israeli military has also said that it launched a drone strike on “terrorists” in the densely populated Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, where it said “armed terrorists fired and hurled explosive devices at Israeli security forces.” In both Gaza and the West Bank, noncombatants are among the dead.
Both territories were captured by Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967. Situated along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea near the southwest corner of Israel, Gaza has been governed by Hamas since 2006. The larger of the two territories, the West Bank is led by President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority.
Israeli settler tensions
Even before the Hamas attack on Israel, 152 West Bank Palestinians were killed between January and July, according to data from the United Nations, making it one of the most violent periods for the territory since 2005.
This has been fueled by a surge in attacks by Jewish settlers and almost daily arrest raids by the Israeli military. In the first six months of this year, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs recorded “591 settler-related incidents resulting in Palestinian casualties, property damage or both,” it said in a statement.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
