Ten Palestinians were injured on Friday as Israeli forces quelled an anti-settlement-construction rally in Beita town, south of the West Bank city of Nablus, according to medical sources, said Palestinian official news agency (WAFA). Director of the Palestinian Red Crescent's (PRC) Emergency Department in Nablus, Ahmad Jibril, told WAFA that PRC medics evacuated ten Palestinians who were injured by Israeli occupation army live ammunition in confrontations at Jabal Sbeih, located near the town, to hospitals. He pointed that one of the casualties sustained a serious injury by a live round in the neck. The villagers of Beita, Yatma and Qabalan towns, south and southeast of Nablus, took part in the rally called for in protest of the construction of a new colonial settlement atop Jabal Sbeih (Sbeih Mountain). The nonviolent rally was called for after a group of Israeli settlers set up over 20 mobile homes or caravans atop the mount as a prelude for taking over the complete mount and establishing a colonial outpost. Issa Barham, in his 40s, and Zakaria Hamayel, 28, were killed and dozens of others were wounded by Israeli military gunfire in Beita in the past two weeks. The number of settlers living in Jewish-only colonial settlements across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of international law has jumped to over 700,000 and colonial settlement expansion has tripled since the signing of Oslo Accords in 1993. Israel's nation-state law, passed in July 2018, enshrines Jewish supremacy, and states that building and strengthening the colonial settlements is a "national interest."
