国际英语新闻：Fayyad says Palestinians face challenge for freedom struggle in 2011

RAMALLAH, Dec. 31 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said on Friday that the year 2011 will be a year of challenge for the Palestinian people in their struggle to achieve freedom.

Fayyad had joined on Friday afternoon the weekly protests against the separation wall that Israel built on the West Bank territories near the West Bank city of Ramallah.

"The popular resistance against the wall and against settlement shows the Palestinian rejection to the occupation and their insistence to gain their national legitimate rights," Fayyad told reporters.

During the protests, clashes erupted between Palestinian demonstrators, backed by international solidarity movements' members, and the Israeli soldiers in the village of Ne'lein, west of Ramallah.

During the clashes, the Palestinians threw stones at the soldiers, who fired tear gas canisters and rubber bullets. Medical sources said that four protestors were injured during the clashes.

The Palestinians have been organizing weekly protests over the past eight years, since Israel had decided to build up the separation wall on the lands of the Palestinians in the West Bank.