Israeli Occupation Impose Military Closure on Palestinian Town of Silwad

West Bank, MINA – Residents of the Palestinian West Bank town village of Silwad are living through the third day of a full Israeli military closure following a shooting attack on an Israeli settlers’ bus near the town.

As quoted from The New Arab on Tuesday, Israeli forces continue to forcibly close the Palestinian town of Silwad, east of Ramallah for the third day, blocking its entrances and surrounding roads and isolating its residents and the population of several neighbouring villages.

The Israeli military closure of Silwad began late on Saturday following a shooting attack on an Israeli settlers’ bus on Road 60 near the town. No casualties were reported.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Israeli forces raided Silwad and arrested several Palestinians before blocking one of the town’s entrances with mounds of dirt and closing the other entrance with a checkpoint.

“The closure has begun to create sanitary problems as we can’t access the town’s dumpsite and get rid of solid waste,” Raed Hammad, mayor of Silwad told The New Arab.

“Food stocks are still available at this stage, but if the closure continues for long, stores might begin to run low on food and other daily life products,” the mayor said. “It is mostly employees in companies and institutions in the city [Ramallah] living in Silwad who are affected as they can’t go to work.”

“This is a collective punishment that not only affects the 10,000 people of Silwad but of all neighbouring villages who use the same roads to access the city,” he added.

“On Saturday, Israeli forces were letting cars through the checkpoint out of Silwad very early in the morning, so I took the bus to college,” Israa Zyadeh, a third-year student of Public Administration at Birzeit University, told The New Arab.

“At the checkpoint, the soldiers stopped us for 42 minutes, checking our papers and forcing some passengers down the bus,” Zyadeh said.

“They arrested five men from the bus I was on. One of the arrested was a student,” she added. (T/RE1)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)