Israeli settlers and soldiers were met yesterday with an unusual Palestinian confrontational approach, as hundreds of youth, accompanied by Israeli and foreign sympathizers, took over roads reserved for settlers and barricaded them with chains or their own bodies.
Confusion reigned among the soldiers manning the Naleen military checkpoint linking West Bank settlements with Israel when they were surprised by young people who overran their position. The soldiers tried to attack the youth, but two of the latter threw themselves in front of a military jeep and obstructed its advance for a while. A number of settlers were forced to park their cars on the side of the road and raise the chains blocking the street in order to let dozens of other cars pass through.
Hundreds of Palestinians took to the roads reserved for settlers and closed them off for a short period of time. The Israeli army pursued the activists from one street to the next and blocked some roads to prevent activist buses from passing, as clashes erupted in a number of locations resulting in some activists getting injured or arrested.
The call to close settler roads in the West Bank came at the conclusion of the Palestinian Youth Week events that were organized to commemorate the death of late President Yasser Arafat on the eleventh of this month, and the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on the fifteenth.
Abdallah Abou Rahme, one of the movement’s organizers, told Al-Hayat: “We came here to tell the settlers that this is our land, and these are our streets. You have to leave, you have to go back to Israel.”
The movement’s creators also hoped to transform the blocking of settler roads into a daily resistance activity on the Palestinian territories. “Settlers are gobbling up our land piece by piece; we must act to impede their every movement upon this land”, as Abou Rahme said.
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