Six treated for tear gas in a raid on al-Faraa camp

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said its crews treated six Palestinians for tear gas inhalation during an Israeli army raid late on Saturday on al-Faraa refugee camp, which lies in the northern occupied West Bank, south of Tubas. All six were dealt with where they were found, and none was described as needing to be moved on to a hospital.

Israeli forces went into other places in the West Bank the same night. In al-Bireh, next to Ramallah, troops spread through several neighbourhoods; official Palestinian radio said no one was arrested and no house was raided. In al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah, gas canisters were fired at Palestinian houses as troops moved through the village; no one was reported hurt there.

In the Old City of Hebron, Israeli soldiers struck journalists and stopped them from working while a group of settlers, under military escort, walked in and made for the Bab al-Baladiyeh area, according to the same broadcaster and to residents who spoke to reporters. Troops also held Palestinian residents and shopkeepers back from moving through the streets while this went on.

The sequence in Hebron is the part of the night that describes itself. Journalists were removed before the settlers arrived rather than after, and shopkeepers were kept off their own streets for the duration. What is left of such an hour afterwards is whatever witnesses can say about it, which is why the accounts that survive are always the thinnest kind of evidence and always contested.

Tear gas, meanwhile, does the work in a camp that rifles do in open country. Six people treated at the scene without a shot being reported means canisters fired into a place where the air has nowhere to go, and where the people who breathe it are not the ones the troops came in for.