Click on the Headline to View Full Story!
Civil Administration chief:
Hundreds of units approved in disputed areas
There are hundreds, even thousands, of planned housing units in the West Bank that have building permits and do not need any further government approval before their construction can begin, Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai, the head of the Civil Administration, told the interministerial committee on illegal outposts Tuesday.
PA expresses outrage over J'lem construction during talks
The first formal Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in seven years got off to a rocky start Wednesday, with the Palestinians lambasting Israel for a new construction project planned in disputed East Jerusalem, a Palestinian official said. The Palestinians have said that newly announced Israeli plans to build more than 300 apartments in the Har Homa neighborhood threatened to undermine the talks. The Palestinians hope to establish the capital of an independent state in East Jerusalem.
Turkey calls Israeli settlement plan 'shocking'
Turkish President Abdullah Gul on Tuesday strongly denounced Israel's plan to build new settlements in annexed east Jerusalem and urged the Jewish state to retract the decision. "Israel's intention to build new settlements in east Jerusalem has shocked the whole world... The Israeli leadership must correct this," Gul told reporters after talks with visiting King Abdullah II of Jordan.
Troops demolish a Palestinian home in Jerusalem
Israeli bulldozes belonging to Jerusalem Municipality demolished on Tuesday a Palestinian home in the Old City of Jerusalem and attacked two brothers while attempting to evacuate their furniture from the house before the bulldozers leveled it.
IDF leaves Palestinian home in shambles after weapons search
Last Thursday, in the middle of the night, soldiers arrived at the Nasser household in the village of Yata in the southern Hebron Hills. They came on a routine search for concealed weapons based on intelligence information, but the damages they left behind at the Palestinian family's home were nothing but routine.
Israel army chief says big Gaza push more likely
Israel's army chief said on Wednesday daily strikes against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip were having an impact but he believed a big military offensive would be needed.
Israeli Occupation Forces Kill 5, Invade Gaza
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip - Israeli ocupation force tanks and bulldozers invaded the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, killing five members of the Palestinian resistance movent and trapping hundreds of people in their homes, while another resistance member died from an airstrike elsewhere in the occupied territory.
A Palestinian resistance
fighter killed by Israeli army in central Gaza
Local media sources in central Gaza Strip said that a Palestinian resistance fighter of the Saraya aL-Quds Brigades, of the Islamic Jihad group, has been killed after an Israeli tank fired a shell on a group of the Saraya fighters in eastern Gaza Strip.
Four kidnapped in Hebron including one female
Israeli military forces abducted four Palestinians, including one female during separate incidents in the southern West Bank city of Hebron on Wednesday. Local sources reported that military forces invaded homes and kidnapped two residents in the town of al Shoyokh located north east of Hebron. The abductees were later identified as Mohammad Halayka and Amer Husien.
Palestinian security forces arrest 13, at least 4 of whom are Hamas members, near Nabulus.
Palestinian security forces stormed the village of Yasid, north of the West Bank city of Nabulus on Wednesday and arrested 13 people, at least four of those arrested were members of the Hamas movement.
PCHR Calls for Investigating the
Abduction, Torture, and Shooting of 3 Gazans
PCHR calls for an immediate investigation into the crime of abducting 3 residents of Gaza City, torturing them, and shooting them by unknown gunmen. The Centre stresses that this crime is a continuation of the security chaos plaguing the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).
Palestinian Prisoner Denied
Access To Care -- PHR
In December 2005, PHR-Israel submitted a petition, demanding that the Israel Prison Service (IPS) pay for a kidney transplant for Ahmad Al-Tamimi, a Palestinian prisoner. After approximately two years, throughout which IPS and Beilinson Hospital withheld the examinations, which finally showed that the potential donor matches Al-Tamimi, and therefore that the transplant is medically feasible, the court ruled that IPS must pay for the transplant.
Detainees families hold a protest in
front of the Red Cross office in Tulkarem
Hundreds of families of Palestinian detainees imprisoned by Israel held a protest in front of the Red Cross Office in the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem and appealed human rights groups and the Red Cross to intervene and allow the entry of warm clothes to their detained family members.
Israeli tanks, bulldozers move into Gaza
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip - Israeli tanks and bulldozers backed by attack aircraft moved into the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, killing five militants in the widest operation in the territory since Islamic Hamas forces wrested control in June. Another died in an airstrike in northern Gaza.
An Israeli army incursion into southern
Gaza leaves 6 dead, 19 injured
Palestinian medical sources reported on Tuesday that six Palestinians have been killed and 19 others wounded, during an Israeli army ground offensive on southern Gaza Strip today. Dr. Moa'wiya Abu Hasanin, chief of emergency room of the health ministry, told the IMEMC that a number of the wounded had to undergo surgery to amputate limbs and that majority of those killed had burns all over their bodies.
Siege that Spells Slow Death for the Innocents
FOR three weeks, seven-month-old Mohammed Abu Amra has been lying in Gaza's main paediatric hospital, suffering from immune deficiency and suspected cystic fibrosis. His doctors do not have the drug they need to relieve his symptoms, which include fever and distressed breathing, racking his thin ribs at almost twice the healthy rate of breaths per minute.
Gaza's Donkeys in Demand as Fuel Crisis Mounts
It's not surprising the buyers at yesterday's weekly donkey market here were looking over their prospective purchases with care. They opened the jaws of the tolerant beasts to examine their teeth, and test-drove them, harnessed to a cart, out of the crowded yard to gauge their pulling power. "You need to make sure that it doesn't kick people with its back legs, that it's strong and that the colour of the coat is all right," said Saber Dabour, 25. He had just bought a donkey for 410 Jordanian dinars, or just under £290.
Hamas-Fatah unofficial talks continue
despite wide differences
Contacts between Hamas and Fatah officials in West Bank were going on despite wide differences, Hamas officials announced Wednesday, responding to conflicting reports. Hamas leaders, Hussien Abu Kwaik and Faraj Romana, said the difference was back to the security compounds which Hamas occupied in Gaza. Fatah determines that Hamas gives up control on the security before any dialogue while Hamas demands the opposite.
Hamas urges PA to cancel
Wednesday's peace talks due to Gaza op
Hamas on Tuesday called on the Palestinian Authority to cancel the following day's peace talks with Israel in response to the IDF operation in Gaza in which 6 Palestinians were killed. A Hamas spokesman in Gaza said that it would be an "embarrassment" for Palestinian representative to shake the Israelis' "blood-stained" hands, Israel Radio reported.
Hamas asks US to free Gaza 'ghetto'
THE Hamas rulers of Gaza have implored the US to bring an end to the crippling boycott of the Gaza Strip, which they have likened to the World War II siege of Warsaw's Jewish Ghetto. In the militant group's first public appeal to the US since it won democratic elections in the Palestinian Territories in January last year Hamas said yesterday it did not have "any ideological arguments with the West".
Hamas is here to stay
Daily deadly attacks on Gaza, the resumption of incursions into West Bank towns and villages and the plan to build three hundred housing units in East Jerusalem is hardly what the Arabs who attended Annapolis expected to be its immediate results. The Israeli measures must have surprised even Mahmud Abbas and his team mates who, at Annapolis, were all smiles. Anyone watching TV footage of the Annapolis receptions could not miss the opportunity to see members of the Palestinian team warmly hugging members of the Israeli team, while other Arab delegates watched from a distance. The smiles on the faces reflected a congratulatory mood and expressed optimism that some unprecedented breakthrough was in the pipeline.
Blair urges int'l donors to back
PA's $5.6 billion economic plan
The Quartet's Mideast envoy Tony Blair on Tuesday praised a Palestinian development plan that seeks $5.6 billion in aid over three years, and urged donor countries to provide the required funds.
Palestinian refugees demonstrate in northern Lebanon
Beirut - Palestinians went on strike in northern Lebanon Tuesday to protest the delay in efforts to reconstruct the devasated Nahr al-Bared camp, Palestinian sources said.
UNRWA in rush to school Nahr al-Bared
children-Many students attending classes in shifts
BEIRUT: While Palestinians protested on Tuesday against the lethargic tempo of improvements at the war-torn Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, only days ago did the final students living in the camp start their school year, as agencies worked to seal up leaky temporary dwellings put together on land next to the camp, United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) spokeswoman Hoda al-Turk said Tuesday.
Gaza makes an appeal to you!
About 60 years have passed since our Palestinian catastrophe (Nakba). Palestinian people have passed through and tasted several sufferings and calamities, and the Gaza Strip, which includes about 1.5 million people, 75% of them refugees, got a big share of this suffering. By the start of the 2nd Intifada in 2000, Israeli Occupation violated all the taboos international conventions and has tortured Palestinians severely.
DFLP, PFLP, Islamic Jihad delegates
visit a number of Human Rights Organizations in Gaza
On the anniversary of the International Declaration for Human Rights, delegates representing the leftist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)and the Islamic Jihad Movement visited a number of human rights groups in Gaza.
The occupied Palestinian territory: Overview map (as of Oct 2007)
OPT: Palestinian food insecurity in 2006 (as of Oct 2007)
True Aim of Annapolis, and Why It Failed The US-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland was neither a success nor failure, if one accepts that its so-called objective was indeed 'peacemaking'. From a US perspective, the meeting was, at best, a diplomatic manoeuvre on the part of the Bush administration, a last chance for becoming relevant to a region that is quickly escaping its grip. At worst, the conference was a desperate public relations charade aimed at convincing the American public that the administration's plans for democracy and peace in the Middle East are unfolding smoothly. In both scenarios, the conference was a necessary but fleeting distraction from the prevailing criticism that the Iraq war is a 'nightmare' without end.
Latest Poll: U.S. Jews
Oppose Compromise on Jerusalem
The American Jewish Committee released its always insightful Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion yesterday. Among its notable findings is this: A clear majority (58%) of American Jews do not believe that "Israel [should be willing] to compromise on the status of Jerusalem as a united city under Israeli jurisdiction"even "in the framework of a permanent peace with the Palestinians." Combined with the recent polling of Israelis' views on this matter, it is abundantly clear that the consensus view among the Jewish People is to retain Jerusalem as our eternal and indivisible capital.
Survey: U.S. Jews are losing interest in Israel
American Jews are losing interest in Israel according to figures released Tuesday in the American Jewish Committee 2007 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion. Figures showed that 69% of Jewish Americans agreed with the statement "Caring about Israel is a very important part of my being a Jew" in 2007, compared to 74% last year and 79% in 2005.
Mayor of frontline Israeli town quits over Gaza
The mayor of a town on the front line of Israel's conflict with Palestinian militants resigned live on radio on Wednesday in protest at the government's failure to halt rocket fire from Hamas-run Gaza. Militants in the Gaza Strip, seized by Hamas Islamists from their Fatah rivals in June, fire short-range rockets and mortars every day at towns in southern Israel. While few cause damage or injury, the rockets spark widespread panic among residents.
Running a gauntlet in Jerusalem
EFRAT, West Bank–Some might dismiss it as just another 20-minute outing on one more four-lane highway, but to Yitzhak Sokoloff it's a way of making history. The Israeli tour operator shuttles each working day between a town many would say is illegal – some use even harsher language – and a city that all would agree is among the holiest in the world.
Palestinians drive to
Jordan for the fist time since 1976
On Wednesday a team of Palestinian car racers will leave Ramallah and drive to Jordan in their own cars, something which hasn't happened since 1976. The team will participate in the final round of the 2007 Jordanian racing championship of al Aqapa. The race will be launched next Friday by Prince Faysal Bin Al Hussien, Head of the Jordanian motor sport federation.
Popular Tunisian singer
Saber el-Rubai makes rare visit to W. Bank
One of the most popular singers in the Arab world, Tunisian Saber el-Rubai, made a rare visit to the West Bank on Tuesday and urged other Arab artists to follow in his footsteps.
First Palestinian policewomen deployed to direct W. Bank traffic
Palestinian pedestrians gawked at the unusual sight of women directing chaotic Ramallah traffic on Wednesday, the first batch of women to venture into a job traditionally reserved for Palestinian men in the West Bank.
Helper 'a hero' in NYC subway attack
Four Jewish students assaulted on NY subway receive help from fellow Muslim rider. A suspected bias attack on four Jewish subway riders has resulted in a friendship between the Jewish victims and the Muslim college student who came to their aid. Walter Adler is calling Hassan Askari a hero for intervening when Adler and three friends were assaulted on a subway train in lower Manhattan on Friday night.
0 Have Your Say!:
Post a Comment