The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) quelled on Saturday a march against settlement building and the confiscation of thousands of dunums in Masafer Yatta south of al-Khalil and arrested a Palestinian citizen.
Local sources reported that IOF attacked several participants after a fistfight broke out with them in the anti-settlement march which was organized by local and foreign activists.
This coincided with the presence of a Jewish settler on a farm built on Palestinian lands in the area. He insulted the solidarity activists with obscene words.
IOF arrested Sheikh Suleiman Al-Hathalin (Abu Adel) after the clashes erupted in Masafer Yatta.
Hathalin said before his arrest that this march was launched to refuse the confiscation of more than 10 thousand dunums to construct Jewish-only settlements.
Ratib al-Jabour the coordinator of the Popular and National Committees to Resist the Wall and Settlements explained that the IOF had already expropriated 3600 dunums and the landowners are fighting this unprecedented fierce settlement attack.
Al-Khalil is the second city after Jerusalem in the settlement targeting priorities of the Israeli occupation authorities because of its historical and religious significance.
Al-Khalil suffers from the presence of more than fifty settlement outposts in which about thirty thousand Jewish settlers live.
The Israeli government and settlement groups are speeding up time to control the largest possible amount of land establish more settlements and build roads taking advantage of the current situation due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Palestinian estimates indicate that there are about 650000 Israelis living in Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank and Occupied Jerusalem.
According to a periodic report issued by Hamas’s media office in West Bank the IOF committed 1575 violations against the Palestinians and their lands in the West Bank and Occupied Jerusalem during September.
