News - Middle East - Palestine: Israeli settlers have opened indiscriminate fire at Palestinian homes in the occupied East al-Quds neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

Israeli forces stood by during the shooting incident on Wednesday evening and took no action to stop it, the Palestinian Wafa news agency reported. 

They also detained a 13-year-old Palestinian boy from the flashpoint neighborhood.

Over the past months, Sheikh Jarrah has been the scene of crackdown by Israeli police on Palestinians.

Israeli authorities have been trying to forcibly evict dozens of Palestinian families from the East al-Quds district, claiming that its homes belong to Israelis, but Palestinians accuse the occupying regime of land grab.

The forced evictions are widely seen as part of Israel’s attempts to change the demographic character of the occupied territories.

The Tel Aviv regime has also demolished many Palestinian houses in al-Quds or forced their owners to raze the buildings in a bid to pave the way for the expansion of Israeli settlements.

The United Nations has reported a 21 percent increase in the number of Palestinian structures that were confiscated or destroyed this year.

Most of the international community considers Israeli settlement construction illegal under international law and an obstacle to the so-called two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Nearly 700,000 Israelis live in illegal settlements built since the 1967 occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds.

The UN Security Council has in several resolutions condemned the Tel Aviv regime’s settlement projects in the occupied Palestinian lands.

Source: Press TV