A pregnant Palestinian had a miscarriage in Israeli tear gas attack

Areej Abu Alya, the 37 year old Palestinian, had a miscarriage last week as Israeli soldiers lobbed several rounds of tear gas shells at her home in the village of Al-Mughayyer near Ramallah.

The pregnant woman choked on the tear gas, while Israeli forces repeatedly targeted her house. 

Abu Alya fainted due to suffocation. As she was taken to the hospital by her husband Iyad, doctors told him her condition had worsened and that they were unable to detect her baby’s pulse. Abu Alya stayed in intensive care for several days as she needed blood transfusions.

"We live in a very dangerous area. Tear gas canisters are scattered around the house and inside, and I can no longer collect them immediately to throw them out of our children's reach," Abu Alya’s husband told Palestinian media.

Abu Alya and her husband Iyad have eight children. Iyad said that the unabated military aggression has been making their life miserable for several years. 

"Every week I take my children to the village doctor, all of them with severe symptoms as a result of inhaling tear gas and suffering from a burning sensation in the lungs, which causes them to vomit, and have chest pains and severe coughs," he said. 

According to Iyad, the recent tear gas which was used by the Israeli occupation forces, was much more toxic than the ones they have suffered from before. 

On several occasions in the past, the Palestinian doctors have accused Israel of using chemical weapons under the garb of tear gas shelling, as well as testing new varieties of chemically-laced weapons on the civilian neighbourhood of the occupied Palestinian territories. 

The Israel-occupied West Bank is the worst hit region. It is where illegal settlers and Israeli soldiers rule the roost and routinely carry out brutal attacks on the Palestinian people. 

Last month, a Palestinian teenager named Ali Abu Alia was killed on his birthday when the Israeli occupation forces shot him dead. 

On December 4, Abu Alia participated in a protest against the new illegal Jewish settlements in his village al-Mughayer in the north east of Ramallah.

As he stood in the crowd, an Israeli soldier shot him in the abdomen, killing him on his 15th birthday.

Talking to Middle East Eye, his mother Nihad said: "I made him maqluba, his favourite dish that he used to ask for every Friday. We waited for him to come back in order to eat it together, but he did not return home and we never ate it.”

Ongoing attacks on civilians

On Thursday, more than 17 Palestinians were detained by Israeli soldiers when they started to storm several Palestinian cities across the occupied West Bank.

According to the Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS), the arrests mainly took place in southern Hebron and central Ramallah governorates. 

In a statement, the PPS said former Palestinian parliamentarian, Mohammad Badr, was among the people detained when Palestinian youths confronted the Israeli forces.

The same group also claimed that a Palestinian journalist covering the attacks of Israeli occupation forces on civilians, was shot with a rubber-coated bullet.

The Israeli army carries out frequent arrest campaigns across the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem under the cover of searching for “wanted” Palestinians. 

According to recent estimates, 4,400 Palestinians are currently in Israeli prisons, including 40 women and 170 children, while around 380 of them are held under Israel’s administrative detention policy, which allows the detention of Palestinians without charge or trial.

As per the report published by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, Israeli authorities also destroyed at least 729 Palestinian buildings – including 273 homes just in 2020. 

The Israeli rights group said; “Over the course of 2020, Israeli security forces killed 27 Palestinians, seven of them minors: one in the Gaza Strip, 23 in the West Bank including East Jerusalem and three inside Israel.”

In at least 11 of the 16 killings investigated by the group in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinians “posed no threat to the lives of the forces” or any other person at the time they were shot.