Wednesday, February 27

Today in Palestine! ~ Headlines February 27, 2008 ~

Shadi Fadda
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Gazans told to boil water as
chlorine runs low

The Palestinian water utility urged Gazans on
Wednesday to boil their drinking water and said
contamination was a risk because an Israeli-led
blockade was choking off chlorine supplies.

Israeli undercover force kill one
Palestinian in Nablus

A special undercover unit of the Israeli army
invaded the northern West Bank city of Nablus on
Wednesday morning, killing one, wounding three
and kidnapping five,local sources reported.

Israeli army kills seven Palestinians
in under 24 hours

Both medical sources and eyewitnesses reported
that five resistance fighters members of the
Al-Qassam Brigades have been killed, with three
others wounded in two Israeli air strikes early
Wednesday morning.

Two farmers klled in Gaza,
death toll reaches 7

Palestinian medical sources reported that two
Palestinian farmers were killed, on Wednesday
afternoon, during Israeli shelling of farm land
near Gaza city in the northern part of the coastal region.

Israel kills Palestinian in air strike - medics

An Israeli air strike killed a Palestinian militant in the
Gaza Strip on Wednesday, Palestinian medical staff
and militant groups said.

Palestinian farmer shot dead by
Israeli troops in Khan Younis

Palestinian Medical sources reported on Tuesday at
night that a Palestinian farmer died of wounds
sustained during evening hours when Israeli troops
opened fire at him as he was farming his land in
Al Qarara town, near Khan Younis in the southern
part of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli army attacks Palestinian societies
and schools in Hebron

On Tuesday morning, Israeli forces invaded several
buildings belonging to the Islamic charitable
Association and Muslim Youth Association in the
southern West Bank city of Hebron. The Army then
confiscated property on the attacked sites based on military orders.

Seven Palestinians kidnapped
in Israeli operation in Jenin

Israeli forces kidnapped at least seven civilians in
a pre-dawn invasion. Among those kidnapped were
relatives of wanted Palestinians on the Israeli list
from the northern West Bank city of Jenin.

Israel arrests 17 Palestinians
in West Bank raids

Israeli forces stormed several towns in West Bank
and arrested 17 Palestinians, Palestinian security
sources said on Wednesday. In Nablus city, the
army detained four residents, claiming they were
wanted by Israel.

Activists assaulted during warrantless
home invasions in Beit Ommar

Israeli and international Human Rights Workers
(HRW's) from Hebron and Jerusalem were notified
at 7pm on Monday Feb. 25 of two home invasions
by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) at the village
of Beit Ommar which has been the location of repeated
assaults and curfews by the Israeli military. The two
homes were both reported to contain at-risk persons
including an elderly man dependent on oxygen and a
stroke victim in the other house.

Israeli killed in massive
Qassam barrage on Negev

At least one person was killed, several were wounded
and many were treated for shock Wednesday as least
30 Qassam rockets slammed into the western Negev
town of Sderot and surrounding communities.

Olmert: No one in Hamas will be
immune against war we wage

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Wednesday said that
a war was being waged in southern Israel and the Gaza
Strip, and vowed that "no one in Hamas, not the
low-level officials nor the highest echelon, will be
immune against this war."

Rights group slams IDF probe
into deadly Beit Hanun shelling

A prominent Israeli human rights group on Wednesday
criticized an Israel Defense Forces probe that decided
not to press charges in an errant artillery attack that
killed 21 Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip in
November 2006. The Military Advocate General
announced late Tuesday that it was closing the
case after its investigation determined the deaths
were the result of a "rare and severe"
technical malfunction.

Hamas condemns Israeli attacks
against Palestinians

The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) on
Wednesday said the Israeli attacks against the
Palestinian people reveal the Israeli and the
U.S. intentions towards the Palestinians.
Hamas' spokesman Fawzi Barhoom said that "
They also show the fake face of the Americans and the
Israeli occupation which always claimed that the
problem was at the Palestinian side."

Fatah armed wing says not committed
to the truce with Israel

Al-Aqsa Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement in the
West Bank said on Wednesday that it is not
committed to the truce with Israel after its
members were arrested.

Report: Palestinian homes are demolished
in East Jerusalem, construction is prohibited

A report issued on Tuesday by the Society of the Arab
Studies indicated that the Israeli Ministry of interior
and Jerusalem Israeli Municipality are actually
implementing a daily and systematic policy which
prohibits the Arabs for building in the city, and
encouraging the demolition of Arab homes in
East Jerusalem.

Morgantini calls for transparent
inquiry into the death of Barghouthi

EU Parliament Vice President, Luisa Morgantini,
called on the Palestinian National Authority, President
Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad
to hold an independent and serious inquiry into the
death of Majd Al Barghouthi, a political prisoner who
died in a Palestinian prison.

Ghoul: Abbas is primarily responsible
for the murder of Barghouthi

MP Mohamed Al-Ghoul, the head of the legal
committee of the PLC, held the PA chief Mahmoud
Abbas legally responsible for the killing of Sheikh
Majd Al-Barghouthi in the intelligence apparatus's
jails in Ramallah in his capacity as the top official in
charge of this apparatus.

Abbas government accused of torture

More detainees have complained of torture by
the Palestinian Authority following the death in
custody of a Hamas religious leader in the West
Bank. The family and followers of imam
Majd al-Barghouthi say he was tortured to death
last Friday, an allegation that the authorities
strenuously deny.

Inside a Failed Palestinian Police State
The death of Hamas preacher Majed al-Barghouti in a
prison cell last week — apparently after being tortured
— momentarily shattered the surface calm of news
reports from Ramallah. But neither the subsequent
rioting nor the fact that the dead man came from one
of the most prominent Palestinian families disrupted
the 'democracy versus terror' agenda that has
distorted most news reporting out of the West Bank
since last June (when Hamas took control of Gaza).

Abrash announces his resignation from
his post as PA culture minister

Ibrahim Abrash, the culture minister in Salam
Fayyad's unconstitutional government, announced
Monday his resignation from his post in protest at
the ongoing separation between the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip, the siege imposed on Gaza and the
absence of any prospects for the negotiation process.

Abbas accuses the rival Hamas
movement of aiding Al Qaida

The Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of the
Fatah movement accused their rivals Hamas of
providing aid to Al Qaida to establish a base of
operations in the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

Hamas denies al-Qaida exists in Gaza
Interior Ministry of the deposed Hamas administration
on Wednesday denied a claim by Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas that fighters related to al-Qaida had
infiltrated into the Gaza Strip. In a statement sent to
the press, the ministry said Abbas' claim that al-Qaida
exists in Gaza was "meant to give Israel pretext and
cover to target the civilian residents"
in the Hamas-ruled Gaza.

UN expert: Palestinian terror
'inevitable' result of occupation

A report commissioned by the United Nations
suggests that Palestinian terrorism is the inevitable
consequence of Israeli occupation and laws that
resemble South African apartheid - a claim Israel
rejected Tuesday as enflaming hatred between Jews and Palestinians.

UN official: Situation in Gaza threatens
prospects for peace process

The current situation in Gaza is not sustainable and is
extremely damaging to the prospects for the current
peace process, said UN Emergency Relief Coordinator
John Holmes on Tuesday. "I found conditions for the
people of Gaza grim and miserable, and far from 'normal,'"
said Holmes in a briefing to the UN Security Council on
his recent visit to the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel.

Captured Israeli's
lawyers say will meet Hamas

Two French lawyers representing an Israeli soldier
held by Hamas will travel to Gaza this week to discuss
his fate with the militant group, a member of the family's
legal team said on Tuesday, but Hamas denied any talks.
The lawyers told a Paris news conference that Hamas
had forwarded a letter from Sergeant Gilad Shalit,
who also has French nationality, to his family in
recent weeks and he appeared to be in reasonable
health, mentally and physically.

Haaretz-Dialog poll: Most Israelis
back direct talks with Hamas

Sixty-four percent of Israelis say the government
must hold direct talks with the Hamas government
in Gaza toward a cease-fire and the release of
captive soldier Gilad Shalit. Less than one-third
(28 percent) still opposes such talks.

No investigation into deadly
shelling of Beit Hanoun in 2006

Military advocate general rules death of 21 Palestinians
in November 2006 incident in which errant IDF shell
hit residential homes was the result of a rare malfunction
in the artillery control mechanism used in the strike.
No legal action to be taken against those involved.

Yes, Canada, there is torture in Israel
Israeli Ambassador Alan Baker recently expressed
his indignation over Canada's listing of Israel as a
state that engages in torture in a training manual
for diplomats. The ambassador asserts that torture
is not practiced by Israel and based on this it seems
that the Canadian Foreign Ministry will reevaluate
this manual and "correct" it. The problem, however,
is not the manual but the fact that Israel continues
to regularly practice torture. Louis Frankenthaler comments.

Video: This is how Israelis Deal With
Peaceful Palestinian Resistance.
Bil'in demonstration 22.2.2008


Hamas: Abbas's statements in Egypt
abort efforts to break siege on Gaza

The Hamas Movement has unequivocally accused on
Tuesday PA chief Mahmoud Abbas of aborting all
Palestinian and Arab efforts to break the two-year-old
economic blockade on Gaza Strip. The sanctions took
their toll on the Palestinian patients, mostly children
and elderly people, as number of the victims crossed
the line of 100.

Palestinians should seek reparations
from Germany

In the early months of the Aqsa intifada against the Israeli
occupation, an Israeli officer in the Nablus region told
dozens of handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian detainees
that "we are treating you like the Nazis treated us,
and maybe when you are free from our grip, you will find
another people whom you will treat the same way we
are treating you."

Gaza flower producers
watch their industry die

When Hassan Sheikh Hijazi first opened his flower farm
in 1991, it flourished. "We had a very good family business,"
he says. "We exported hundreds of thousands of flowers to
Holland and from there our flowers were sold across Europe.
The traders knew our flowers were good quality --
and Gaza was open for business." With its mild coastal
weather and well-drained soil, the Gaza Strip is an ideal
location for commercial flower farming. There are more
than a hundred small flowers farms across the Gaza Strip,
and they employ some 7,000 farm workers between them.

Isolated by the wall: The case of Nu'man village

The village of Nu'man lies at the southeast edge of the
Jerusalem Municipality, a few hundred meters north of
Beit Sahour, a Palestinian town near Bethlehem.
Northwest of Nu'man, in East Jerusalem, lie the villages of
Umm Tuba and Sur Baher and the Har Homa settlement.
Nu'man's 170 residents live in almost total isolation from
Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Crossing the Line interviews
activist Neta Golan

This week on Crossing The Line: The ethnic cleansing of
Palestine continues. As Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert and his government expand settlements in the
West Bank while asserting that "painful concessions"
are being made, what is really going on behind the
scenes? Host Naji Ali* speaks with Ramallah-based
activist Neta Golan.

The breakthrough that did not happen

For an entire day, the Israel Defense Forces raised
the level of hysteria in Israel by announcing they
were preparing for the possibility that thousands of
Gazans would try to break through the checkpoints.
It is easy now for the army to say that the
breakthrough did not occur only because of the warnings
that Hamas would be held responsible for the blood that
would be shed. But anyone who is attentive to the
Palestinians as an occupied people rather than as
"an intelligence objective" (which openly provided the
information that women and children would
demonstrate against the siege on Monday), was aware
they did not have a plan to topple the barriers at the
Erez and Karni crossing points.

Jordanian police arrest five they
suspect of being Hamas spies

The BBC reported on Wednesday that the
Jordanian police arrested five men, believed to be
spies for the Palestinian Hamas movement.

Obama: I'm a 'stalwart friend'
of Israel, its security is 'sacrosanct'

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama on
Tuesday stressed his "stalwart" support for Israel
and his ties to American Jews, during a presidential
debate with rival candidate Hillary Clinton.

A Nightmare World of Torture and Prison
Guard Suicides, Confessions of a Gitmo Guard

A psychiatrist who has treated former military
personnel at Guantánamo prison camp is telling a
story of prisoner torture and guard suicide there,
recounted to him by a National Guardsman who
worked at Guantánamo just after it opened.

-------------------------------------------------

Window Into Palestine's Headline of The Day!
Norman Finkelstein Respects Resistance,
"It's better to die on your feet than
to walk crawling on your knees....
how can you not respect

those who say they would rather die on
their feet? How can YOU not respect that?"

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