25 January 2019•Update: 25 January 2019
By Qais Abu Samra
RAMALLAH, Palestine
Clashes erupted on Friday between Palestinian protesters and Israeli forces in different parts of the occupied West Bank.
The clashes occurred in the towns of Al-Mughayyir east of Ramallah and Kafr Qaddum west of Nablus.
In Al-Mughayyir, at least six Palestinians were injured by Israeli army gunfire while dozens of others suffered the effects of excessive teargas, according to Palestinian medical sources.
In Kafr Qaddum, meanwhile, Israeli forces used teargas, rubber bullets live ammunition to disperse demonstrators, protest organizer Murad Shtewi told Anadolu Agency.
Palestinians responded by throwing stones and setting car tires alight, Shtewi said.
Every Friday, Palestinians stage demonstrations across the West Bank to protest Israel’s decades-long policy of building Jewish-only settlements on confiscated Palestinian land.
According to estimates, some 640,000 Jewish settlers currently live on 196 settlements (built with the Israeli government’s approval) and more than 200 settler outposts (built without its approval) throughout the occupied West Bank.
International law regards the West Bank -- including East Jerusalem -- as "occupied territory" and considers all Jewish settlement-building activity there to be illegal.
Israel-Palestine peace talks collapsed in 2014 due to Tel Aviv’s refusal to halt West Bank settlement building and accept pre-1967 borders as a basis for a two-state solution to the conflict.
