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RABA, Occupied West Bank: Palestinians and the Israeli army clashed on Friday during a march in a village in the northern occupied West Bank against a newly established Israeli settlement outpost.
“We came to this area to express our protest and say: ‘this land is ours, not yours’,” Ghassan Bazour, head of Raba’s village council, told AFP.
While all Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law, only outposts such as the one established overnight in Raba are also prohibited under Israeli law.
An AFP journalist at the scene reported that a group of men holding Palestinian flags and those of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’ Fatah party walked from Raba toward a nearby hill on top of which settlers had established the outpost.
After conducting the Muslim Friday prayer at the base of the hill, people continued toward the outpost, until Israeli soldiers arrived on the scene and dispersed the crowd with tear gas, the journalist said.
The army did not respond to an AFP request for comment on Friday’s events in Raba.
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported that its teams had provided support to 13 people suffering from tear gas inhalation.
Village council chief Bazour said that settlers had originally taken over the hill’s high ground to establish an outpost and deny Palestinians access to nearby agricultural lands.
“There is now a settler outpost here (which) will continue to devour the land and empty these areas,” Muayad Shaaban, head of the Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, told AFP.
Despite it being dispersed by the army, Shaaban was enthusiastic about Friday’s march, given that violence in recent years has made all protests against settlers dangerous for Palestinians.
“This model of resistance must be applied throughout the West Bank. I call for massive marches... to stop this aggression, this terrorism,” he said.
Violence in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has soared since the Hamas attack of October 2023 triggered the Gaza war.
Since October 7, 2023, Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 956 Palestinians, including many militants, according to health ministry figures.
Over the same period, at least 36 Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations, according to official figures.

BERLIN: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call on Friday that he hoped for a “speedy ceasefire” in war-torn Gaza, Berlin said.
Merz also “stressed that the urgently needed humanitarian aid must now reach the people in the Gaza Strip in a safe and humane manner” and that the “disarmament of Hamas was imperative,” his office said in a statement.
“The chancellor expressed his hope for a speedy ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. All remaining Hamas hostages, including those with German citizenship, must be released immediately.”
The statement added that Merz “advocated for finding a viable post-war order for Gaza that takes into account Israeli security needs and the Palestinian right to self-determination.”
The chancellor also “emphasized that there should be no steps toward annexing the West Bank.”
Speaking earlier at a Berlin press conference, Merz labelled the events in Gaza as “no longer acceptable.”
He also emphasized Germany’s commitment to Israel’s security, saying: “We are doing everything we can to do justice to both sides, it is clear where we stand.
“But we also see the suffering of the Palestinian population and are trying to do everything possible to provide humanitarian aid here as well.”
More than 21 months of war have created dire humanitarian conditions for Gaza’s population, displacing most residents at least once and triggering severe shortages of food and other essentials.
The war was triggered by the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 58,667 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.