ISRAEL TEARS DOWN E1 PROTEST TENT CAMP FOR SECOND TIME

Bethlehem, 16 Rabi’ul Akhir 1436/6 February 2015 (MINA) – For a second time in two days, Israeli forces on Thursday (5/2) morning tore down a protest tent camp which Palestinian popular resistance activists rebuilt in the E1 area.

Bawwabat al-Quds (the Gate to Jerusalem) was first set up on Tuesday evening and Israeli forces destroyed it on Wednesday morning, Ma’an News Agency quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) as reporting.

Defiant resistance activists then rebuilt the main tent in the camp on Wednesday evening.

Local sources told Ma’an Thursday that Israeli troops stormed the camp at 2 a.m. Thursday after all activists left and tore down the tent. The sources said that the Israelis confiscated the tent and all properties they found in the camp.

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The Gate to Jerusalem was set up in the Khilet al-Rahib area east of Abu Dis near the main Ramallah-Bethlehem road in protest against Israeli settler encroachment on Palestinian lands east of Jerusalem.

The protesters were outraged at an Israeli plan revealed last year which called for the forced expulsion of tens of thousands of Palestinian Bedouins from their lands across the central West Bank area known as E1, where Israeli authorities have repeatedly expressed their desire to build Jewish-only settlements that would definitively split the northern and southern West Bank. (T/P006/P3

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)