UM AL-FAHAM (PIC)– Israeli policemen escorting a march for far-right activists in Um Al-Faham on Tuesday fired rubber bullets and teargas canisters and opened water cannons at Arab citizens who blocked their way into the city.
Sheikh Ra’ed Salah the leader of the Islamic Movement in 1948 Palestine told Al-Jazeera TV that a number of citizens were injured in the process and charged the police with blocking access to the wounded citizens.
He stressed that the Israeli oppression of Palestinians started ever since the occupation of most of Palestine in 1948 charging the Zionist fanatics with maintaining a policy of religious and racial discrimination against the Palestinians and with trying to force the Palestinians to abandon their lands.
Salah said that Arabs from various areas of Palestine occupied in 1948 came to Um Al-Faham in solidarity with this city in a reflection of a unanimous stand in defense of Arab destiny and future and in rejection of the attempts to force them out of their ancestral land.
The city’s municipality had declared general strike in protest over the far-right march at the outskirts of Um Al-Faham led by the leader of the terrorist Kach movement Baruch Marzel which was escorted by 2500 Israeli policemen.
The Hebrew radio said that the Israeli police turned the city into military barracks to protect the march.
In a related issue a report by Musawa (equality) center for Arab citizens’ rights in Israel has disclosed that racial dissemination against those citizens was on the rise.
It said that the center monitored 270 assaults on Arabs since start of 2009 compared to 166 assaults in the entire year of 2008.
