NILIN (West Bank), July 9: Palestinian protesters clashed with troops in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday in one of several demonstrations marking four years since the world court called for the demolition of parts of Israel’s separation barrier.

Soldiers fired tear gas as teenagers hurled stones in running clashes among the terraced olive groves and cactus walls outside the village of Nilin, where residents stage weekly demonstrations against a nearby expansion of the barrier.

About 200 Palestinian and international activists had marched to the construction site, a wide gravel gash running down a hillside, before several young men climbed on to a parked earthmover and broke its windows.

Soldiers in several jeeps rushed to the scene and fired tear gas as the youths took cover among the olive trees and threw rocks at them. “Down with the occupation, down with the occupation!” Hassan Musa, a 33-year-old schoolteacher yelled as he waved an olive branch and a Palestinian flag in front of a group of soldiers.

“This is Abu Ghraib, Nilin will be a prison like Abu Ghraib!” he said, referring to the notorious prison in Iraq, before soldiers set off tear-gas bombs and wrestled him to the ground.

“I want peace, I want peace!” Musa screamed as he was dragged to a waiting jeep. Another three people were detained, witnesses said.

At least seven people, international activists among them, were wounded by rubber bullets and dozens suffered from tear-gas inhalation, organisers said.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said “violent and illegal riots” had taken place outside the village and that a soldier, a border policeman and a maintenance worker were hit by rocks and injured.

Other protests were held in Deir al-Ghuzzun, near the northern town of Tulkarem, and in Azzum Atma near the town of Qalqiliya, which is almost completely surrounded by the barrier.

The demonstrations marked four years since the International Court of Justice issued a non-binding resolution calling for parts of the barrier inside the West Bank to be torn down and for a halt to construction there.

Israel has ignored the ruling, as well as a similar order by its own High Court that nullified three sections of the wall, including one that runs near Bilin, a town near Nilin that has held weekly protests for more than two years.

“Our goal is to stop the bulldozers,” said Salah Khawaja, one of the organisers of the recent Nilin protests at which dozens of Palestinians, international activists and some Israeli security forces have been wounded.

He said the protests were intended to be peaceful while admitting that there had been incidents of rock-throwing.

“What do they expect from farmers who see their trees are being uprooted? They want to live, they want to send their children to university,” he said.

Earlier this week, Israel imposed a 24-hour curfew in the village in a bid to halt the demonstrations but organisers have vowed to continue.

Meanwhile, Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad slammed in a statement what he called Israel’s “barbaric military campaign” against Nilin.

Israel says the barrier is needed to stop potential attackers from infiltrating Israel and Jewish West Bank settlements, but Palestinians say it is a land grab aimed at undermining the viability of their promised state.

To date Israel has built 57 per cent of the projected 723 kilometres of steel and concrete walls, fences and barbed wire, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

When complete, 87 per cent of the barrier will be built on West Bank territory which Israel occupied in 1967, according to the OCHA. Before the protest began, Musa, who came with his seven-year-old son, said:

“The building of the wall affects everyone’s life. They want to expel us from our land.” Placing his hand on his son’s head, he smiled and said: “He will come with us because I want him to live in peace, just like I want their children to live in peace over there (in Israel), without this occupation.”—AFP