NABLUS, Palestine

Israeli army forces on Friday used rubber bullets and teargas shells to disperse Palestinian protesters in the occupied West Bank, injuring at least 40 protesters, a Palestinian official said. 

“The Israeli army attacked the weekly march [in the Kafr Qaddum town], using rubber bullets and teargas shells,” Murad Shtewi, a protest organizer, told Anadolu Agency.

Shtewi said the injured persons are being treated in the field.

The Friday weekly protest has witnessed the participation of Palestinian leaders from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), he added.

Every Friday, Palestinians across the Israeli-occupied West Bank stage demonstrations to protest Israel’s decades-long policy of building Jewish-only settlements on the confiscated Palestinian land.

According to estimates, 640,000 Jewish settlers currently live on 196 different settlements built with the Israeli government’s approval and more than 200 settler “outposts”, built without Israeli approval, throughout the West Bank.

International law regards the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, an "occupied territory" and considers all Jewish settlement-building activity there to be illegal.