(MENAFN- Jordan News Agency) Several Palestinians were hurt Saturday when Israeli occupation forces tried to break up a peaceful march protesting Israeli attempts to expropriate land and build a settlement outpost at the site of a church compound near Hebron in the southern West Bank.
The demonstration was organised by the Committee for Popular Resistance Against the Wall and Settlements to demand protection of Beit al-Baraka church site against judaisation attempts. The holy site is located near Beit Ummar village on the Jerusalem-Hebron road, where local activists say Jewish settlers were trying to seize dozens of dunums of Palestinian land to expand a nearby settlement.
Palestinian sources said soldiers beat up participants during the march, planned to protest Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon's order to renovate the church site and build a settlement in the vicinity. The expansion scheme lies in a sensitive location, which, when completed, will see Israeli settlements stretch all the way from the Gush Etzion settler bloc south of occupied Jerusalem to the cluster of settlements around Hebron.
George Awad, the pastor of the Baraka Bible Presbyterian Church, in Bethlehem, Palestine, condemned the attempt to seize Beit al-Baraka and urged the world's religious and non-religious organisations "to stand up with us to return this site for serving the Palestinian people." Awad said his church had ten years ago thwarted an Israeli bid to seize Beit al-Baraka and proved its claim on the compound.
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