Israeli army soldiers attempt to detain injured Palestinian man

In footage captured during a protest in the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers are seen forcibly attempting to remove an injured Palestinian man from an ambulance.

Israeli soldiers keep guard in Jordan Valley, the eastern-most part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank that borders Jordan
The Jordan Valley is home to about 60,000 Palestinians [File: Ammar Awad/Reuters]

Israeli army soldiers attempted to forcibly pull out and arrest an injured Palestinian from an ambulance of the Palestinian Red Crescent in the occupied West Bank, footage of the incident shows.

Israeli soldiers open the vehicle’s door and try to take a Palestinian man who appears injured following protests on Tuesday against Israel’s policy of home demolitions in the Jordan Valley.

In the footage, an Israeli soldier appears to push an aid worker in an attempt to reach the wounded man, but the aid worker manages to close the ambulance door just before it leaves the scene.

The Palestinian health ministry condemned the Israeli soldiers for entering the ambulance, the second incident targeting medical personnel in days.

“Israeli occupation soldiers attacked an ambulance belonging to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and attempted to arrest one of the injured from inside it,” Palestinian Health Minister Mai Al-Kaila said in a statement.

“The world saw in video how occupation soldiers stormed an ambulance with weapons trying to arrest one of the injured,” she said.

On Tuesday, 24 Palestinians were wounded as Israeli army soldiers fired rubber-coated bullets and tear gas at protesters in a bid to disperse them in the Jordan Valley.

The Jordan Valley is home to about 60,000 Palestinians, according to the UN, but nearly 90 percent of the land is part of what is known as Area C, the three-fifths of the West Bank that is under complete Israeli control.

It includes closed military areas and about 50 illegal Jewish settlements housing some 12,000 Israelis.

Palestinians are barred from those areas and from the lands they own. They are forbidden from digging wells or building any kind of infrastructure without hard-to-get military permits.

From 2009 to 2016, less than 2 percent of more than 3,300 permit applications in Area C were successful, according to Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement group, citing official statistics.

Anything built without a permit, from home extensions to tents, animal pens and irrigation networks is at risk of demolition by the Israeli military.

Almost 800 Palestinians, including 404 minors, have already lost their homes in 2020.

Throughout the entire previous year, 677 lost their homes, up from 387 in 2018 and 521 in 2017.

The area is under the threat of Israeli annexation. Plans to formally annex the Jordan Valley have sparked an international outcry, with European and Arab countries warning it would violate international law and threaten any remaining hopes for a two-state solution.

Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies

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