Tel Aviv, March 15: Israel has curbed access for the next six months to two Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank villages that have staged weekly demonstrations against Israel’s illegal separation barrier, the Israeli military said Monday.
Israeli troops posted notices overnight in Nilin and Bilin saying surrounding areas have been declared closed military zones by Israel, with no access to outsiders between 8:00 am and 8:00 pm every Friday, the day of the protests.
The Israeli occupation military said the move was intended to prevent protesters reaching the area in which the protests take place and that it would apply to all Israelis, foreigners and Palestinians not living in the villages.
The Israeli military often declares the areas closed military zones during protests, but this is the first time it has issued a blanket order for such a long period of time, protest organisers said.
“Usually the orders are issued on a single day or for a specific event,” one organiser, Jonathan Pollak, said.
Pollak said the orders were “illegal,” and “are not supposed to be used for demonstrations, but for military reasons.”
The weekly demonstrations that have been going on for several years are billed as non-violent but frequently turn into clashes between rock-throwing Palestinian youths and Israeli troops firing tear gas and rubber bullets.
Israel says the barrier — a network of walls, fences and closed military roads — is designed to prevent attacks. The Palestinians view it as an “apartheid wall” that carves off key parts of their future state.
Israel has so far completed 413 kilometres (256 miles) of the planned 709-kilometre (435-mile) barrier, according to UN figures.
When completed, 85 percent of the wall will have been built inside the West Bank, taking land from villages like Bilin and Nilin.
The international community has condemned Israel’s decision to construct the barrier, stressing that is illegal under international law.
Israeli troops wounded 10 Palestinians on Monday as they opened fired on dozens of students hurling stones at a West Bank checkpoint, Palestinian medics and witnesses said.
“We have received six people, two of them wounded by live bullets, one in the stomach and the other in the neck,” Mohammed Eida, the director of Ramallah area hospitals, said, revising an earlier toll from medics.
He said another four demonstrators were lightly wounded and treated at the site of the clashes near the Atara checkpoint, north of the town of Ramallah.
Israeli troops on Saturday clashed in the occupied West Bank with Palestinian women and youths who were protesting against plans to build new illegal Jewish settelments.
A media correspondent said the troops fired tear gas to disperse about 200 Palestinian women and youths who gathered at the Qalandiya checkpoint north of occupied Jerusalem.
Four women and two young Palestinian men were slightly injured in the scuffles, during which a petrol bomb was hurled at the troops.
An Israeli military spokesman said that four people were arrested.
—Agencies