Jerusalem, March 20: Palestinian demonstrators clashed with Israeli security forces in the West Bank and East Jerusalem during anti-settlement protests.
In Israeli-occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem, troubles broke out in the Shuafat Palestinian refugee camp, where youths throw stones at Israeli occupation forces who fired massive volleys of tear-gas grenades.
Witnesses saw the participation of plainclothes Israeli forces, who grabbed six Palestinian youngsters.
There were also skirmishes in the city’s Issawiya neighbourhood.
Some of the fiercest confrontations were at Qalandia, the main crossing point between Jerusalem and Ramallah.
Staff at a Ramallah hospital said six Palestinians were injured in those clashes, one of them in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the chest.
Palestinian Qalandia is guarded by a combination of Israeli police, troops and civilian contractors.
A military spokeswoman said she had no knowledge of Israelis opening fire there.
In the West Bank city of Hebron, about 300 protesters chanted “Thousands of martyrs march to Jerusalem” and several of them hurled rocks at Israeli occupation forces who fired tear gas.
In Dir Nizam, near Ramallah, about 100 Palestinians hurled rocks at soldiers, slightly injuring one, the military said. An army statement said three alleged protestors were detained for questioning.
Similar confrontations took place at Bilin and Nilin, sites of weekly Palestinian protests against Israel’s West Bank “security barrier.”
Friday’s biggest rallies were in the Gaza Strip, where there had been calls for protests by the democratically elected movement Hamas, and by the resistance group Islamic Jihad.
More than 10,000 people, demonstrated in the strip’s central area and another 2,000 in the southern town of Rafah, according to one journalist.
Israeli warplanes hit the disused Gaza airport in the south of the coastal strip late Friday night and Palestinian medical officials said 11 people in the vicinity were hurt, although only two were described as in serious condition.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is heading for a weekend visit to Gaza, the West Bank and Israel and as the United States sought to get Palestininans and Israelis talking peace.
Meanwhile on Friday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the strong US reaction to Israeli settlement plans is “paying off,” with Israeli-Palestinian negotiations expected to resume.
The chief US diplomat sounded upbeat a day after hardline Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telephoned her to answer US concerns about illegal Jewish settlements in Palestinian East Jerusalem amid one of the worst rows in decades between the two close allies.
“What I heard from the prime minister in response for the request we made was useful and productive, and we’re continuing our discussions with him and his government,” Clinton told reporters in Moscow.
“That means that it is paying off because that’s our goal,” she told the BBC when asked about her tense 40-minute phone call with Netanyahu a week ago in which she asked him to reverse course on the settlement building plans.
“Let’s get the parties into a discussion, let’s (put) the principal issues on the table and let’s begin to explore ways that we can resolve the differences.”
Israel occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem in 1967 and calls all of Jerusalem its “eternal and indivisible” capital, contrary to international law which states land cannot be legitimately won through invasion or occupation.
East Jerusalem is considered by the international community to be illegally occupied by Israel, in contravention of several binding UN Security Council Resolutions.
In these resolutions, the United Nations Security Council has also called for no measures to be taken to change the status of Jerusalem until a final settlement is reached between the sides.
Declaring Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is an attempt to change this status, and is thus a violation of these resolutions.
All Jewish settlements are illegal under international law because they are built on Arab land (mainly Palestinian), illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.
Around 200,000 illegal Jewish settlers are estimated to have moved into the dozen or so Israeli settlements in Palestinian East Jerusalem.
East Jerusalem is home to about 270,000 indigenous Palestinians.
—Agencies