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Today in Palestine! ~ Headlines ~ |
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Israel
plans new town on seized land
Israel defied international
pressure to freeze construction of new Jewish homes in the occupied
territories when it said yesterday that it was planning to build a
dormitory town on the northern edge of Jerusalem.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/12/20/wisrael120.xml
Housing
Minister backtracks, says no new E. J'lem housing plan
In
an about-face from a day earlier, Israel's housing minister on
Thursday said he never intended to pursue a massive construction plan
for East Jerusalem, a plan that sparked Palestinian outrage and a
chilly reception from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/936656.html
Palestinian
refugees from Iraq stranded in desert camp
CAIRO, Egypt
—Hundreds of Palestinian refugees who've been forced out of their
homes in Iraq are stranded in a remote stretch of the Syrian desert,
where they're living in tents that offer little shelter against
blinding sandstorms and the biting cold of winter nights, according
to humanitarian aid workers and refugees. Syrian authorities
have barred the Palestinians from leaving the Tanaf refugee camp near
the border with Iraq. Journalists aren't allowed to visit.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/iraq/story/23427.html
Palestinian
child dies due to the Israeli siege on Gaza
Palestinian
medical sources reported on Thursday that a Palestinian child died on
Wednesday night because of the Israeli army siege on the Gaza Strip.
http://www.imemc.org/article/52052
Palestinian
Patient dies due to the Israeli siege on Gaza
Palestinian
teen died on Wednesday due to the Israeli siege imposed on the Gaza
Strip, Palestinian medical sources in the Gaza strip reported.
http://www.imemc.org/article/5204
43
Palestinian patients died so far as a result of the siege on Gaza
Two
sick teen-age girls died on Wednesday, the first day of Eid, in Gaza
after being barred from seeking medical treatment abroad by the
Israeli occupation. Palestinian medical sources on Wednesday morning
announced the death of Dua Imran, 18 years, after suffering from a
chronic disease and being barred from seeking medical treatment
abroad because of the hermetic siege imposed on the Gaza Strip.
Furthermore, 15-year-old Rawan Nassar, who suffered kidney failure,
died on Wednesday evening, according to medical sources in the Gaza
Strip.
Sick
Gazans beg for treatment on Israel's doorstep
Mustafa
Hillu writhes underneath blankets, the pain pulsing outward from the
cancer in his right leg, and he cries out for someone to persuade
Israel to let him in for treatment. If the 36-year-old father of five
is not granted entry soon doctors will have to amputate his leg at
the groin to prevent the cancer in his femur from spreading,
according to his family and an Israeli rights group. "The
security services said they would not let him pass for security
reasons. But he can't even walk. He has cancer... we have to carry
him to the bathroom," his brother Marwan says. Mustafa clutches
an official security permit that should allow him to have a femur
transplant at an Israeli hospital, and he also has documents from a
hospital in Tel Aviv confirming that he had an appointment on
December 9. But like dozens of seriously ill Palestinians he is
confined to the Gaza Strip, itself a sick and mangled limb of the
decades-old Middle East conflict.
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=23612
Collision
course
From his home on the Upper Galilee road between
Safed and Rosh Pina, as Brigadier General (res.) Zvika Fogel looks
out over Lake Kinneret, the Gaza Strip seems a distant memory. But
four years after Fogel retired from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF),
Gaza continues to preoccupy him. He became chief of staff of Southern
Command headquarters in February 2000, and in the past few years he
has reflected a great deal on the actions he and his fellow officers
carried out in the months that preceded the eruption of the second
intifada, at the end of September 2000. His conclusion: the IDF
created an irreversible situation that led to a confrontation with
the Palestinians.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/936744.html
Israeli
procedures on Huwara checkpoint disturb Muslim Eid holiday
At
the end of the first day of the Muslim festival Eid of Al Adha,
scores of Palestinian families were stuck at the Huwara checkpoint,
south of Nablus on Wednesday night, waiting for the Israeli soldiers'
permission to pass the checkpoint, after returning back from visiting
their relatives.
http://www.imemc.org/article/52051
Catholic
leader: Israel discriminates against non-Jews
A top
clergyman in the Catholic church challenged Israel's self-definition
as a 'Jewish state', saying that it discriminates against non-Jews.
Arab lawmakers inside Israel have long pointed to nineteen specific
laws that favor Israeli Jews over Israeli non-Jews inside Israel. In
addition, the Israeli military has maintained a military occupation
over the two Palestinian territories, the West bank and the Gaza
Strip, since 1967. Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, a Palestinian
himself, made the statement in Jerusalem Wednesday during a
pre-Christmas press conference. Sabbah stated that the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been perpetuated by Israel's
"unwillingness to make peace". He added that all religions
should be allowed to share the Holy Land. ''If there's a state of one
religion, other religions are naturally discriminated against,'' said
Sabbah.
http://www.imemc.org/article/52047.html
Sanctions,
military strikes rob Gaza of festival cheer
GAZA CITY: As
Muslims across the world celebrated Eid al-Adha yesterday with the
ritual slaughter of animals, charity, and joyous feasting, the weary
residents of the Gaza Strip brace for more sacrifices. Six months
after the Islamist movement Hamas seized power, the territory remains
in the grip of Israeli and international sanctions, battered by
near-daily military strikes aimed at Palestinian militants. "The
Islamic world celebrates Eid al-Adha with joy and happiness, with
family visits and travel... but we in Palestine celebrate the Eid
with martyrs and blood," Hamas leader Ismail Haniya told a crowd
of thousands yesterday. On Tuesday, 12 militants were killed
across Gaza in a wave of Israeli air strikes, including a top leader
of Islamic Jihad.
http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=191040&
version=1&template_id=37&parent_id=17
ISRAEL-OPT:
Palestinian shepherds forced to move on
"The best
thing about Khirbet Qassa was the grazing land. We had open spaces.
Now we've become dependent on other people and their land," said
Abdel Halim Nattah, a shepherd in the southern West Bank.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/98b3309b4f2e836eb2186a6ac3cdf76c.htm
Report:
Israel continue to conduct human rights violations against
Palestinians
The Adalah Human rights group that is based
in Israel has recently issued a report presenting a selection of the
cases it has worked on during the year in which it challenged some of
Israel's most blatant violations of human rights against the
Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians living in the West
Bank and the Gaza strip.
http://www.imemc.org/article/52054
Politicising
Gaza's Misery
Intense debate over Gaza is subsiding as
the status quo is delineated -- predictably -- by those with the
bigger guns. But to what extent can human suffering be politicised,
turned into an intellectual polemic that fails to affect the simplest
change in people's lives? Hamas's political advent in January
2006 as the first "opposition" movement in the Arab world
to ascend to power using peaceful and democratic means was
successfully thwarted in a brazen coup, engineered jointly by the
United States, Israel and renegade Palestinians factionalists.
Following this, history was rewritten, as is usual, by the victor.
Thus Hamas, a party embodying democratic institutions in the occupied
territories, became the party that "overthrew" Abbas's
"legitimate" democracy. As strange a notion as that is (a
government overthrowing itself), it went down in the annals of
Western media as uncontested truth.
http://palestinechronicle.com/story-121907201142.htm
Hamas
calls for truce with Israel
On Islam's most important
holiday, the leader of Gaza's Hamas government appealed Wednesday for
a cease-fire with Israel and said his people — battered by Israeli
military strikes and international sanctions — are greeting this
year's feast with "tears in our eyes."
http://www.rawstory.com/news/mochila/Hamas_calls_for_truce_with_Israel_12192007.html
Hamas
offer for peace rejected by Israel
The
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who just hours earlier declared
"war on Gaza", refused to acknowledge an offer for peace
made by the deposed Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyya.
Haniyya conveyed the message through the Israeli media, claiming that
he had both the will and ability to stop the Palestinian resistance
groups from firing homemade shells across the Gaza border into
Israel, but only if Israeli forces would stop their daily bombing of
the Gaza Strip, and end the blockade that has kept the Palestinian
population of Gaza imprisoned there since June. Sleman al-Shafhe, he
reporter who conveyed the offer through Israel's Channel Two
television, said that Haniyya told him he would have "no
problem" with negotiating the terms of a truce with Israel.
Hamas attempted a truce last year, and was able to get all
Palestinian resistance factions to stop their...
http://www.imemc.org/article/52046.html
Israel
says it opposes Russian plans for Moscow peace summit
Using
diplomatic backchannels, Israel urged participants of the Quartet's
Paris donors conference earlier this week to omit any mention of a
Moscow peace summit from the final statement.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/936698.html
ANALYSIS-Aid
can't save Palestinian economy in Israeli grip
The world
has promised to inject $7.4 billion into the decaying Palestinian
economy, but money cannot stop the rot unless Israel lifts its
chokehold on trade and travel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, relief
groups say. The idea is to show Palestinians that a new peace effort
brokered by Washington can improve their lives and reinforce a U.S.
policy of strengthening "moderates" against
"extremists".
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L20564574.htm
Inside
Gaza: The Challenge of Clans and Families
Gaza/Jerusalem/Brussels,
20 December 2007: As Hamas seeks to consolidate its rule and restore
stability to Gaza, it must deal with powerful clans and families with
which it has been at loggerheads since its June 2007 seizure of
power.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/ICG/d815a1f785190119e7b069c3fe148d9e.htm
For
Israel's Arab Citizens, Isolation and Exclusion
KARMIEL,
Israel -- Fatina and Ahmad Zubeidat, young Arab citizens of Israel,
met on the first day of class at the prestigious Bezalel arts and
architecture academy in Jerusalem. Married last year, the couple
rents an airy house here in the Galilee filled with stylish furniture
and other modern grace notes. But this is not where they wanted to
live. They had hoped to be in Rakefet, a nearby town where 150 Jewish
families live on state land close to the mall project Ahmad is
building. After months of interviews and testing, the town's
admission committee rejected the Arab couple on the grounds of
"social incompatibility."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/19/AR2007121902681.html?hpid=topnews
(See
also video here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2007/11/21/VI2007112101842.html
)
Palestinian
Census Back on Again
The Palestinian census, called off in
Gaza last month, is back on track after assurances from international
agencies, Hamas officials said Tuesday. Hamas initially agreed to
cooperate with the census, the first in a decade, in parallel with a
count by President Mahmoud Abbas' rival government in the West Bank.
But after accusing the surveyors of violating an agreement to share
the data, Hamas officials shut down the Gaza census office.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j02BwWVj1-2uXHk0lLUlVWh0s7wgD8TK3AD00
Adalah
center says it may seek supranational regime in 'all historic
Palestine'
The Arab minority rights center, Adalah, is
considering a proposal calling for a "democratic constitution
for a supranational regime in all of historic Palestine,"
including the territory of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This
constitutes a shift from the proposed Democratic Constitution that
Adalah offered as a constitution for Israel.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=936490
Banksy's
Bethlehem mural erased by residents
Offended Bethlehem
residents have painted over a satirical mural by graffiti artist
Banksy that was meant to highlight their plight. The elusive British
street artist painted six images around the town revered as the
birthplace of Jesus to help drum up tourism ahead of Christmas and to
illustrate the hardships faced by Palestinians in the occupied West
Bank. But the irony behind a painting of an Israeli soldier checking
a donkey's identity papers -- a jab at the Jewish state's strict
security measures -- was lost on some locals, who found it offensive
and painted over it.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L20635843.htm
EU
envoy: Gaza int'l force may be set up quickly
The
mechanism for an international security presence in the Gaza Strip
"could be devised quickly" if Israel and the Palestinians
reach an agreement on the matter, EU Middle East envoy Marc Otte told
The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday. Otte said there is "definitely
more interest than in the past" for the idea from both the
Israeli and Palestinian sides.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1196847385402&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Experts:
Extreme rightists will use violence if settlements are evacuated
Extreme right-wing activists are expected to use severe
violence to disrupt any move to evacuate outposts or settlements,
even the destruction of a few homes, according to an evaluation
recently presented to the government by the security establishment
and law enforcement officials in the territories.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/936491.html
U.S.:
We support Israel's right to defend itself against Qassams
The
United States backs Israel's right to defend itself, but said
incursions into Gaza could spark severe consequences, a senior U.S .
official said Wednesday. Deputy spokesman at the U.S. State
Department Tom Casey responded to a question about Israel's recent
military operation in the Gaza Strip, during which 11 Palestinian
militants were killed.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=936413
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