Israel allows 350 Palestinians to travel through the Rafah crossing into Egypt, and 1,770 others (mostly returning patients) to travel into Gaza. In the West Bank, the IDF fires tear gas, stun grenades at Palestinian, Israeli, and international activists protesting new restrictions on Palestinian movement in Wadi Abu al-Rish nr. Bet Ayn settlement (see Quarterly Update in JPS 152), also violently beating 6 protesters (5 Palestinian, 1 Israeli) and a Reuters cameraman, and arresting 15 individuals for “provoking security forces”; conducts late-night house searches nr. Jenin, but makes no arrests. Jewish settlers vandalize several Palestinian houses in Hebron. In Silwan village on the outskirts of Jerusalem, several Jewish settlers attempt to prevent a Palestinian woman fr. parking nr. several houses they have occupied; when the woman’s family intervenes, settlement guards violently beat them with sticks and gun butts, and fire in the air, injuring 10 Palestinians, 4 of them requiring hospitalization. The UN reports that for the 4th wk. this quarter, the PASF arrested more West Bank Palestinians (69) than the IDF (46). (OCHA, PCHR 7/2)
Saturday, June 27, 2009