AT LEAST 21 people were injured in a brutal crackdown on an anti-settlement protest by Israeli security forces in the occupied West Bank on Sunday evening, the Palestinian Red Crescent confirmed today.

Spokesman Ahmad Jibril said paramedics treated 21 injured, including 12 protesters suffering breathing difficulties from the inhalation of tear gas and eight others who had sustained fractures.

Beita’s deputy mayor Mousa Hamayel said that Israeli soldiers had smashed their way into a house in the town south of the city of Nablus and detained a young man.

The rally was called in protest at plans to build a new Jewish-only settlement called Givat Eviatar on top of nearby Mount Sabih. 

Palestinians are angry at the plans that will also see Israeli authorities seize land in the villages of Beita, Huwarra and Za’tara to make way for a new settler-only bypass road. 

Five Palestinians have been killed and over 618 injured in the space of a month as they have tried to stop the building of the new settlement.

Israeli occupying forces have already built one illegal settlement on Mount al-Arma, north of Beita. Both mountains are strategically important, overlooking the fertile Jordan Valley.

More than 700,000 illegal settlers are now living in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of international law. 

The numbers have more than tripled since the signing of the Oslo Accords peace deal between the Palestine Liberation Organisation  and Israel in 1993.

A recent report by Human Rights Watch branded Israel an apartheid state, having enshrined Jewish supremacy in the country’s Nation State Law and systematic discrimination against Palestinians.