IDF breaks up Palestinian march on settlement

Soldiers in Deir Jareer fire tear gas, rubber bullets to disperse 500 Palestinians participating in march toward outpost.

By REUTERS
IDF disperses Palestinian riot 370 (photo credit: REUTERS)
IDF disperses Palestinian riot 370
(photo credit: REUTERS)
DEIR JAREER, West Bank - IDF soldiers fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse about 500 Palestinian villagers marching toward a Jewish settlement outpost in the West Bank on Friday.
The procession, the largest of its kind for years, followed charges by Palestinians that the Israeli settlers, whose caravans abut village land, had attacked them twice this week.
Around half a million settlers have moved to the West Bank and east Jerusalem since Israel captured the area, along with the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Six Day War. Palestinians want the settlements gone from what they see as their future state.
Men from Deir Jareer, including Christian and Muslim clerics, gathered for Friday prayers on a craggy outcrop between their village and a cluster of half a dozen makeshift settler homes surrounded by IDF jeeps and soldiers.
Their march, preceded by a group of stone-throwing youths, was repeatedly pushed back by salvos of IDF tear gas. Young boys howled from the effects of the tear gas and old men hitched up their robes to flee, holding onion slices to their noses.
Medics treated several men for gas inhalation and rubber bullet wounds.
A few Palestinian villages hold weekly protests against the IDF and settlements, usually involving a score of rock-throwing youngsters, and unrest has mounted this year.
But political gatherings are rare around Deir Jareer, and was sparked after villagers say settlers torched around ten of their cars on Monday night, after planting an Israeli flag on a derelict church on Friday and pelting village youth with stones.
"This was a peaceful area. We're gathered today to say we refuse to be attacked and driven off our own land," said Sami Issa, a resident. "We want their army to pull the settlers out."
The IDF has said it is investigating the events leading up to the march. Asked about Friday's incidents, an IDF spokesman said: "Soldiers responded to a group of some 250 stone-throwing youths with riot dispersal means near Ofra."