Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) shot a Palestinian cameraman on Friday in the village of Qalqilya in the northern West Bank, a day after a 55-year old Palestinian man was run over by an Israeli settler in the southern West Bank.
A Palestinian cameraman was shot in the leg on Friday by the IOF while covering clashes in Qalqilya, Ma’an news agency reported.
Bashar Nazzal, a cameraman with Palestine TV, was hit in the leg by live fire and taken to a local hospital for treatment.
The bullet reportedly shattered the bone in his leg.
Last week, an Italian member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) was critically injured along with 11 Palestinians after the IOF opened live fire on a protest march in the village.
Palestinian Minister of Health Jawad Awad told Ma’an that Italian solidarity activist Patrick Corsi, 30, was injured after the IOF fired several bullets at him in the stomach and chest.
ISM, an activist group whose members frequently attend Palestinian protests to monitor the actions of Israeli soldiers, confirmed the shooting in a statement.
Protests are held every Friday in the village of Kafr Qaddum against Israel’s closure of a main road linking the village to its nearest city, Nablus, as well as against the Israeli occupation more generally.
The IOF repeatedly uses excessive force against peaceful protests in the occupied West Bank and annexed Jerusalem.
According to a report published Monday by the Ahrar Center for Detainees’ Studies and Human Rights, the IOF killed nine Palestinians in November alone, while tens of Palestinians, including children, have been wounded in protests or during Israeli incursions in Jerusalem and West Bank.
Since September 2000, following the Second Intifada, at least 9,100 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis, including 2,053 Palestinian children, the equivalent of one Palestinian child being killed every three days for the past 14 years.
Settler violence
Meanwhile, a 55-year-old Palestinian man was injured late Thursday after being knocked down by a settler’s car east of Yatta in the southern al-Khalil region.
Locals said Mohammed Khalil Hamamdeh was riding a horse pulling a cart when he was hit by the settler vehicle.
He was taken to a local hospital for treatment for moderate injuries. His horse was also wounded.
It is unclear whether the incident was deliberate or accidental.
Israeli police who arrived at the scene requested that Hamamdeh present a license for having a horse-drawn cart.
On Tuesday, Palestinian Majdi Majid Najib, 26, was assaulted by five Israeli settlers while he was trying to buy a ticket to go to work in West Jerusalem.
Najib sustained foot injuries and was taken to the al-Maqasid Hospital in the al-Tur neighborhood.
On Saturday, Israeli settlers torched the “Hand-in-Hand” bilingual school and scrawled on its walls racist anti-Palestinian slogans in Hebrew reading “Death to Arabs” and “There’s no coexistence with cancer,” Israeli police said, describing the attack as a “very serious incident.”
Hate crimes by Israeli settlers against Palestinians and their property, referred to as “price tag” attacks, are systematic and often abetted by Israeli authorities, who rarely intervene in the violent attacks or prosecute the perpetrators.
Unrest has gripped Jerusalem and the West Bank on an almost daily basis for the past five months, flaring up after a group of Zionist settlers kidnapped and killed a young Palestinian because of his ethnicity.
To make things worse, Israeli Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch announced in November that Israeli authorities are to ease regulations on Israelis carrying weapons for “self-defense,” raising fears that the number of attacks on Palestinians will increase.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, there were at least 399 incidents of settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank in 2013.
Israeli authorities have also allowed Zionist settlers to take over homes in Palestinian neighborhoods both in annexed East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and announced plans to build thousands of settlements strictly for Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem while ignoring Palestinian residents.
Last month, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah slammed Israel for failing to hold Zionist settlers accountable for a recent wave of violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
“The Israeli government has never brought settlers to account for the terrorism and intimidation they commit [against Palestinians],” Hamdallah said.
More than 600,000 Israeli settlers, soaring from 189,000 in 1989, live in settlements across the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, in contravention of international law.