JERUSALEM, Palestinians today held Friday prayer near a large tract of land threatened with expropriation near the entrance of Hizma town, northeast of Jerusalem, according to WAFA correspondent.
He said that the Palestinians gathered for Friday prayer at al-Thaghra area, before held Palestine flags and placards and rallied in protest of the construction of a nearby settler-only bypass road at the expense of their land.
Israeli occupation authorities have laid the groundwork for the construction of the 16-meter-wide settler-only bypass road, which entails the confiscation of scores of donums of land belonging to the town and will deny shepherds access to grazing land.
Israeli forces deployed in the surrounding area.
It is the same road that Mai Afaneh, a 29-year-old mother for one child and university lecturer, mistakenly took when she was driving her car at the entrance of Hizma before being deliberately gunned down by Israeli forces even without posing a threat to them on June 16.
Israeli severely restricts Palestinians’ freedom of movement through a complex combination of approximately 100 fixed checkpoints, flying checkpoints, settler-only roads and various other physical obstructions.
Closures besides to other measures, taken under the guise of security, are intended to entrench Israel’s 54-year-old military occupation of the West Bank and its settler colonial project which it enforces with routine and frequently deadly violence against Palestinians.
Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency