An-Najah News - In three separate incidents in two weeks, the Israeli occupation forces targeted Palestinian hospitals in the occupied territories, causing injuries and panic, as well as damage to the hospitals, according to the recent report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the occupied Palestinian territory.
The report, Protection of Civilians and which covered the period between December 22, 2020, and January 4, 2021, said that on 26 December, Israeli airstrikes in Gaza city resulted in damage to a hospital, in addition to schools, factories, a mosque, electricity towers, and a water carrier, which disrupted water supply to about 250,000 people.
The airstrikes caused injury of three Palestinians, including a six-year-old girl, and significant damage to civilian structures.
On 27 December in Ramallah city, two Palestinians, including a pregnant woman, staying in the yard of a hospital were hit by rubber bullets shot by Israeli soldiers. An ambulance was also damage.
In the other incident, on 4 January in Tulkarm city in the north of the West Bank, Israeli occupation forces broke into a hospital and fired stun grenades inside causing panic among the patients, some of them were getting treatment for coronavirus. Hospital activities were also disrupted in both incidents.
In other Israeli-army related incidents, and on 1 January, a 24-year-old Palestinian man was shot in the neck by an Israeli soldier while trying to prevent the seizure of an electricity generator and was left paralyzed from the neck down. The incident occurred at al Rakeez hamlet, one of 14 herding communities in the Masafer Yatta area of southern Hebron, in the south of the West Bank, which is designated closed for Israeli military training and whose residents are at risk of a forcible transfer.
On 5 January, near the Gush Etzion junction north of Hebron, the security coordinator of an illegal Israeli settlement shot and killed a Palestinian man who allegedly attempted to carry out a knife attack.
Additional 89 Palestinians, including 16 children, were injured during clashes with Israeli occupation forces across the West Bank during the reporting period, said OCHA, adding that 34 Palestinian-owned structures were demolished or seized due to a lack of Israeli-issued building permits, displacing 22 people and otherwise affecting over 170 others.
All but two of the targeted structures and all displacements were recorded in Area C of the occupied West Bank, affecting 12 Palestinian communities. Two structures were demolished by their owners in East Jerusalem to avoid higher expenses and fines.
In two separate incidents, Israeli forces bulldozed agricultural land and uprooted about 850 Palestinian-owned trees in the West Bank on grounds that the land had been declared ‘state land’.
In multiple incidents, Palestinian were stoned or otherwise attacked by Israeli settlers, including, a boy and a man who were physically assaulted and injured in two separate incidents in East Jerusalem and al Lubban al-Sharqiya near Nablus in the north of the West Bank.
Settlers stoned and damaged vehicles, houses and olive trees, and in one incident the settlers threw a sound grenade inside one home, resulting in no injuries. Dozens of stone-throwing incidents at Palestinian-plated cars were recorded across the West Bank during the reporting period, three of which resulted in damage to vehicles.