Protests erupted across the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip on Thursday, as Palestinians raged against US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in a speech the previous day.
At various locations around the West Bank and Gaza hundreds of Palestinians held demonstrations against the move, setting fires, chanting and clashing with troops.
Demonstrators also burned posters of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as Israeli and American flags.
Dozens of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were reported injured, mostly from tear gas inhalation and Israeli rubber bullets, but also some from live rounds.
On Thursday, Hamas terror group leader Ismail Haniyeh called for a new Palestinian intifada, or uprising. The Palestinian Authority canceled classes for its West Bank school system for Thursday, in an apparent attempt to get more young Palestinians to clash with Israeli troops. Shops were shuttered to begin three “days of rage” over Trump’s decision.
In light of a “situational assessment by the IDF General Staff,” that army said it “decided that a number of battalions will reinforce the area of [the West Bank], as well as combat intelligence and territorial defense units.”
The military would not specify the number of additional battalions being sent in the West Bank as reinforcements.
On Wednesday, the Israel Police also announced that it would be deploying officers throughout the capital, including sites where violence regularly breaks out, like the Old City’s Damascus Gate, where a demonstration was taking place Thursday.
Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip, near the cities of Rafah and Khan Younis, rolled burning tires and threw rocks at the security fence and the Israeli troops on the other side of it, the army said.
The Israeli soldiers initially responded with tear gas and rubber bullets to push the demonstrators back. When “main instigators” continued advancing toward the fence, the troops fired warning shots in the air and when they continued, the soldiers shot live rounds at them, injuring several, an IDF spokesperson said.
In Bethlehem, hundreds of Palestinians squared off against dozens of Border Police officers, separated from each other by a long stretch of empty road.
The protesters threw rocks and set tires ablaze. Israeli troops, in full riot gear, used a water cannon that shoots a foul-smelling liquid — known as “the Skunk” — at the mostly masked demonstrators and also occasionally fired rubber bullets toward the crowd.
The ground near the clash was littered with thrown rocks and other detritus, and the air was filled with smoke from Israeli tear gas and Palestinian tire fires.
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