Palestinians wage settlement ‘day of rage’ against US policy

Thousands of Palestinians took part in a ‘day of rage’ against the US revocation of the illegal status of Israeli settlements.

Palestinian youths engulfed by teargas fired by Israeli security forces in Ramallah. Picture: AFP

Thousands of Palestinian protesters took part in a “day of rage” across the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, with some groups clashing with Israeli forces to protest against the US announcement that it no longer believed Israeli settlements violated international law.

About 2000 people gathered in the West Bank city of Ramallah by midday, where they set ablaze posters of US President Donald Trump as well as Israeli and American flags. Schools, universities and government offices were closed and rallies were being held in other West Bank cities.

“The biased American policy towards Israel, and the American support of the Israeli settlements and the Israeli occupation, leaves us with only one option: to go back to resistance,” Mahmoud Aloul, an official with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement, told the crowd in Ramallah.

Demonstrators held signs reading: “Trump to impeachment, (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu to jail, the occupation will go and we will remain on our land.”

At Israeli checkpoints near Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron, dozens of protesters threw stones at Israeli forces, who responded with teargas. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

Later in the evening, the Israeli military said it identified two rockets fired from the Gaza Strip at southern Israel. One was intercepted by an Iron Dome missile battery. It was the second such attack in as many days by Palestinian militants, and Israeli aircraft retaliated with attacks on several Hamas sites in Gaza. There were no reports of injuries.

Organised by Fatah, Tuesday’s “day of rage” protested the Trump administration’s announcement on Israeli settlements last week. The decision upended four decades of US policy and embraced an Israeli view at the expense of the Palestinian quest for statehood.

Israeli leaders welcomed the US decision, while the Palestinians and most of the world say the settlements are illegal and undermine hopes for a two-state solution by gobbling up land sought by the Palestinians.

Israel says the fate of the ­settlements should be determined in negotiations, even as it steadily expands them.

Israel captured the West Bank and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day war and quickly began settling the newly conquered territory. Today, about 700,000 Israeli settlers live in the two areas, which are claimed by the Palestinians for their state.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced last week that the US was repudiating the 1978 State Department legal opinion.

That opinion had been the basis for more than 40 years of carefully worded US opposition to settlement construction that had varied in tone and strength, depending on the president’s position. Ronald Reagan, for instance, said settlements were not inherently illegal, although he called them unhelpful and provocative. Other administrations had called them “illegitimate” and “obstacles to peace”.

AP