BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) -- Israeli forces arrested four activists at a protest in al-Walaja village near Bethlehem on Sunday.

A statement from the Popular Committee Against the Wall said that Israeli forces arrested campaign coordinator Mazin al-Aza and three others.

The protests against the Israeli separation wall began at the al-Nour mosque in the village, before heading to al-Jweza spring.

Residents of the southern West Bank village are overwhelmingly refugees, driven from the historic al-Walaja, located just across the valley from the current population center.

The village was, in 1948, the second largest land area after Jerusalem but was cut down to one third the size when Israel declared statehood that year.

Now a border village, al-Walaja is edged on its eastern flank by an expanding bloc of settlements and is being reduced in size by the path of Israel's separation wall which annexes between two and three kilometers of village lands from the pre-1967 border.