Yesterday, hundreds of Palestinians from all over the West Bank marched in the Jordan Valley protesting the Israeli occupation’s policies of land confiscation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, which are policies unconditionally endorsed by the US administration.
During the protest, the demonstrators tried to reahc Atouf area to plant olive trees there and show solidarity with its inhabitants suffering from the coercive situation created by the Israeli occupation. The Israeli occupation forces hampered the protesters access to Atouf by setting military road blocks in different parts of the Jordan Valley and by announcing it a closed military area. The Israeli occupation responded to the peaceful demonstrators’ attempts to reach Atouf by using rubber-coated bullets and tear gas canisters against them. Seven Palestinians were injured with rubber-coated bullets in addition to tens of other protesters suffered from suffocation after inhaling gas.
This demonstration was organized by popular committees in the West Bank and by the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission to express Palestinians’ rejection of and continuous outrage at Trump’s ‘theft of the century.’ Palestinians see a liquidation of their just cause in this Israeli-US ‘no peace plan’ as it legitimizes and legalizes Israel’s long-lasting apartheid and settler colonial policies. Today, for Palestinians, struggling to uphold their rights for justice and self-determination also includes upholding the validity of a global world order, rules and norms created to guarantee peace worldwide, which Trump’s plan threatens to bulldoze. Supporting Palestinians’ struggle for liberation and dignity as a colonized people is a challenge for humanity and a necessity to prevent colonization, land theft, injustice and apartheid at a global level.
