Two Israeli peace activists were injured and a number of Palestinian citizens choked on tear gas on Friday after the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) quelled two anti-settlement and anti-occupation marches in Ni’lin and Kafr Qaddum towns in the occupied West Bank.
Local sources reported that IOF soldiers fired sound bombs and tear gas canisters at the protesters in Ni’lin anti-settlement anti-wall weekly march as they approached the apartheid wall built on the town’s lands.
They added that Palestinian youths managed to climb the wall and raise the Palestinian flag on it.
The march set off after Friday prayer and the marchers raised Palestinian flags as well as portraits of the American activist Rachel Corrie who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in the Gaza Strip on 16th March 2003 and the activist Triston Anderson who was hit by an Israeli rocket-propelled grenade that caused him permanent paralysis in Ni’lin on 13th March 2009.
Meanwhile two Israeli peace activists were injured and dozens of suffocation cases were reported among Palestinian citizens after the IOF quelled the anti-settlement peaceful march of Kafr Qaddoum which called for opening the town’s street that has been closed for 14 years.
The coordinator of the popular resistance in Kafr Qaddum Murad Shtewi said that the IOF fired rubber-coated metal bullets and tear gas canisters at the marchers injuring the two activists one in the hand and the other in the face and causing dozens of suffocation cases that were treated in the field.
The IOF soldiers stormed the town raided the houses and stationed on the roofs to fire tear gas canisters at the marchers. They also took pictures of participants and set up ambushes.
The marchers including Palestinian youths and foreign activists chanted patriotic slogans calling for ending the Israeli occupation.
