Footage showing Israeli forces attacking an intellectually disabled young Palestinian man in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of the occupied East Jerusalem al-Quds has gone viral on social media.
The Palestinian Information Center cited local sources as saying that the Israeli troops on Monday “brutally” attacked the residents of Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and other Palestinians who gathered in the area to voice their solidarity with families threatened with expulsion from their homes, and left a large number of them injured.
Among those attacked on Monday was a young man, Mohammed al-Ajlouni, suffering from Down syndrome. The Palestinian Information Center cited a Palestine Red Crescent Society paramedic as saying that Israeli forces physically assaulted him and tried to arrest him.
A film of the attack went viral and drew widespread condemnation on social media.
Tensions heightened across the Palestinian territories on February 13, when Israeli forces and illegal settlers renewed their attacks against Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah.
The neighborhood has been the scene of frequent crackdowns by Israeli regime forces on Palestinians protesting against the threatened expulsion of dozens of families from their homes in favor of Israeli settler groups.
Israel occupied East al-Quds, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip — territories the Palestinians want for a future state — during the Six-Day Arab-Israeli War in 1967. It later had to withdraw from Gaza.
More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank.
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All the settlements are illegal under international law. The United Nations Security Council has condemned the settlement activities in several resolutions.
The initial tensions that erupted in Sheikh Jarrah last year in part sparked a May 2021 war between the Israeli regime and resistance groups in the Gaza Strip.
