Israeli forces expand Chilo settlement, continue detention of Palestinians International solidarity calls for halting the Israeli violations

Hundreds of thousands of members of the International Solidarity movement with the Palestinian people demonstrated in the city of Rafah yesterday denouncing the Israeli violations of the unarmed Palestinians rights.

The demonstrators including foreigners of various nationalities and called for stopping the killing of Palestinians, demolishing of their houses and of killing journalists and peace activists. The demonstrators raised the pictures of activist Rachel Corrie who were killed by the Israeli forces in Rafah and the pictures of her colleague Thomas Horondly who is in a coma.

The movement strongly denounced the inhuman aggressions against the Palestinian people and international volunteers who committed themselves in support of Palestinian rights, urging the UN and the international community to place real pressure on Israel to stop these crimes.

Meantime, the Israeli occupation forces started the expansion of Chilo settlement in the West Bank, while the Israeli soldiers were mopping up areas and quarters in Rafah and launched a campaign of arrest covering scores of the people of the West Bank especially in Bethlehem, Nablus and Qabattiyah and Jenin at a time when Palestinian resistance fired mortars at the Israeli occupation in Ramullah and Rafah.

A report circulated in Amman unveiled that 100 Palestinians were killed and other 883 wounded, many of them in critical health conditions during the military Israeli operations against the Palestinians in February.

A report issued by the Palestinian affairs department of the Palestinian foreign ministry said that the Israeli forces demolished in the same month 842 Palestinian houses in various parts of the West Bank and Gaza and confiscated Palestinian lands and destroyed plants and conducted other practices in violation of human rights and international law.