BEITA, Palestinian Territories: More than 140 Palestinians were hurt Friday in clashes with Israeli troops in the flashpoint West Bank village of Beita, medics said, during protests against an illegal Israeli settlement outpost.
The Israeli army said two soldiers were also “lightly injured” in the violence.
Hundreds of Palestinians gathered in Beita, located in the north of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to protest against the nearby outpost of Eviatar, an AFP correspondent said.
The area has seen regular demonstrations against settlement expansion on Palestinian land.
The Israeli army said that “over the last several hours, a riot was instigated in the area of Givat Eviatar outpost, south of Nablus.”
“Hundreds of Palestinians hurled rocks at IDF (army) troops, who responded with riot dispersal means,” it said in a statement, adding that the two “lightly injured” soldiers were taken to hospital.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said 146 Palestinians were hurt during the clashes, including nine by live fire, 34 by rubber-coated bullets and 87 by tear gas.
Jewish settlers set up the Eviatar outpost in early May, building rudimentary concrete homes and shacks in a matter of weeks.
The construction came in defiance of both international and Israeli law, and sparked fierce protests from Palestinians who insisted it was being built on their land.
But following a deal struck with nationalist Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s new government, the settlers left the outpost on July 2, while the structures they had built were to remain under army guard.
Israel’s defense ministry said it would study the area to assess whether it could, under Israeli law, be declared state land.
Should that happen, Israel could then authorize a religious school to be built at Eviatar, with residences for its staff and students.
Around 475,000 Jewish settlers now live in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.

DUBAI: The crown prince of Abu Dhabi received a call from the prime minister of Israel on Friday during which they discussed cooperation between the two countries.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan and Naftali Bennett also discussed regional and international issues of common interest and efforts to achieve peace and prosperity regionally and internationally.
Bennett congratulated Sheikh Mohammed on the occasion of Eid Al-Adha and wished him continued health and happiness, and the UAE and its people further progress and prosperity.
Sheikh Mohammed thanked the prime minister and expressed his hopes that peace and prosperity prevail for all of mankind.
The crown prince also congratulated Bennett on assuming the position of Israeli prime minister and expressed his aspiration that the UAE and Israel would work together toward peace, stability and development for the benefit of the region and the world.

BEIRUT: Lebanon informed the UN Secretariat on Thursday that Israel had violated Lebanese sovereignty by using Lebanese airspace to target Syrian territory on Thursday morning.
Lebanon claims that Israel violated its airspace while launching attacks on military sites in Al-Qusayr in Syria’s Homs governorate believed to belong to Hezbollah.
It says that a missile from an Israeli plane landed in an area of forest near the town of Lehfed, 56 kilometers north of Beirut in the Byblos region.
The people of Lehfed awoke to the sound of a huge explosion that shook buildings and shattered windows.
A missile had landed within hundreds of meters from populated areas, blasting a hole in the ground about 20 meters deep, according to the townspeople.
Initial information suggested that the missile weighed about 250 kg. No casualties were reported.
Residents of the town of Majdal and neighboring villages in the Koura district also heard the explosion and said they saw flashes of light in the area, which they believed to be the result of Syrian air defenses intercepting the Israeli attack. People in Akkar, a northern region that borders Syria, particularly those in Wadi Khaled and Akroum, said they heard missiles being fired at Shayrat Airbase in Homs.
The Syrian News Agency (SANA) reported: “The air defenses of the Syrian army intercepted the missiles and shot down most of them, causing material damage.”

Former Byblos lawmaker Fares Souaid commented on the incident in a tweet, saying: “The source of the downed missile was the conflict in the region and against the region. Today, it was Lehfed; where will it be next?”
Hezbollah took control of Al-Qusayr in June 2013 during its intervention in the war in Syria, and it is now the site of security headquarters and training centers for the Iran-affiliated militia. Al-Dabaa Airbase, northeast of Al-Qusayr, has been turned into an air supply base for Hezbollah camps.
In 2016, Hezbollah demonstrated its control over the area by holding a huge military parade.
According to several Syrian refugees in camps in Arsal, a Lebanese town on the border with Syria, residents of Al-Qusayr who opposed the Syrian regime fled to Arsal and adjacent rural areas after Hezbollah took control.
They also said that Hezbollah has ammunition and weapons depots west of Al-Qusayr city.
Since February 2014, no refugees have been allowed to return to the city of Al-Qusayr.  In September 2019, Hezbollah urged residents to return, but specified a number of conditions, most notably that they must “be loyal to Hezbollah.”
Also on Thursday, the Israeli army arrested two people who crossed Lebanon’s southern border into the Galilee region.
Candice Ardell, deputy director of the media office at the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), told Lebanon’s National News Agency: “UNIFIL is aware of reports that the Israeli authorities arrested two people who had crossed from Lebanon to Israel early this morning. We are in contact with the (concerned) parties and are following up on the incident.”

Flooding in Yemen killed at least 14 people this week after nonseasonal rainstorms hit parts of the country, security officials said.
The provinces of Al-Mahrah, Hadramawt, Shabwa, Abeen and Jouf in the south and east of Yemen have seen instances of flooding.
In Shabwa, local officials said a father and daughter are believed to have drowned after swiftly moving waters carried their car away.
Searchers had only recovered the body of the father.
The storms are not seasonal for the south and the east of Yemen, which is usually dry this time of year.
The country’s northwestern highlands experience seasonal rain from late spring through early fall.
The storms also damaged crops, roads, and telecommunications infrastructure.
Yemen’s weather service warned late on Wednesday that the rest of the country should be prepared for more rain in the coming two days. Yemen is located at the southern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, overlooking the Red and Arabian seas.

DUBAI: Mobile phone internet service in Iran is being disrupted a week into protests in the country’s southwest over water shortages, a monitoring group said on Thursday, unrest that has seen at least three people killed.
Internet access advocacy group NetBlocks.org attributed part of the disruption to “state information controls or targeted internet shutdowns.”
It identified the outages as beginning July 15, when the protests began in Khuzestan amid a drought affecting the region neighboring Iraq.
While landline service continues, NetBlocks warned its analysis and user reports were “consistent with a regional internet shutdown intended to control protests.”
The effects represents “a near-total internet shutdown that is likely to limit the public’s ability to express political discontent or communicate with each other and the outside world,” NetBlocks said.
There was no acknowledgement of an internet shutdown in Iranian state media. Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Activist groups abroad have described internet disruptions in the region in recent days as well.
Since the country’s 2009 disputed presidential election and Green Movement protests, Iran has tightened its control over the internet.
Tehran deployed a complete shutdown of the nation’s internet in November 2019 during protests over gasoline prices. That both limits demonstrators’ ability to communicate with each other, as well as the spread of videos of the protests with the wider world.
Protests took place across eight cities and towns in Khuzestan into the early hours of Thursday, according to the group Human Rights Activists in Iran.
Security forces fired tear gas, water cannons and clashed with demonstrators, the group said.
US State Department spokesman Ned Price told journalists that Washington was following closely reports that Iranian security forces fired on protesters.
“We support the rights of Iranians to peacefully assemble and express themselves … without fear of violence, without fear of arbitrary detention by security forces,” Price said.

‘We support the rights of Iranians to peacefully assemble and express themselves … without fear of violence, without fear of arbitrary detention by security forces.’

Ned Price, US State Department spokesman

Water worries in the past have sent angry demonstrators into the streets in Iran.
The country has faced rolling blackouts for weeks now, in part over what authorities describe as a severe drought. Precipitation had decreased by almost 50 percent in the last year, leaving dams with dwindling water supplies.
The protests in Khuzestan come as Iran struggles through repeated waves of infections in the coronavirus pandemic and as thousands of workers in its oil industry have launched strikes for better wages and conditions.
Iran’s economy also has struggled under US sanctions since then-President Donald Trump’s 2018 decision to unilaterally withdraw America from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers, crashing the value of the currency, the rial.