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Today in Palestine!

Source: notre partenaire du Sud: El Taller International - Tunis

Friday 15 February 2008

From: Shadi Fadda
To: president@whitehouse.gov
Cc: enquiry@dfid.gov.uk ; inquiries@un.org ; gernot.erler@bundestag.de

Subject: [PACUSA] Headlines Tuesday, February 12, 2008 

OPT: Protection of civilians weekly report 23 - 29 Jan 2008

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/SHIG-7BQHP9?OpenDocument&rc=3&emid=ACOS-635PFR

OPT: UNWRA special appeal for Gaza making very slow progress

UN special appeal for the Gaza Strip has managed to bring in only a small percentage of the US$9.8 million needed for urgent food aid and cash assistance for the enclave’s most vulnerable refugees.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=76680

Palestinians: Two civilians wounded in IAF strike in southern Gaza

The Israel Air Force carried out an air strike Monday in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, wounding two civilians, Palestinian sources said. The Israel Defense Forces confirmed the air strike, saying it targeted a car carrying members of Hamas’ military wing. The army said the car was hit in the strike.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/953244.html

Palestinians who appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court to stop settlers from digging tunnels under their homes were rounded up by the Israel police

For months the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA), with funding from the settler organization ELAD, has been digging under the private property of Silwan residents in occupied East Jerusalem. The owners of the land were not informed nor did they give their consent to the digging that has already resulted in damage to the walls of their homes. The damage to buildings and infrastructure has reached a state where the main road caved in recently under the weight of the winter snow. Letters sent by Attorney Sami Ershed on behalf of the residents to the IAA requesting information about the digging taking place on their land have not been answered.
http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2008/02/11/palestinians-who-appealed-to-the-israeli-supreme-court-to-stop-settlers-from-digging-tunnels-under-their-homes-were-rounded-up-by-the-israel-police/

Army siege on Azzoun village continues

The village of Azzoun remains under strict curfew following the large scale invasion on Friday 8th February. The village of 11,000 people, situated in the Qalqilya region, is currently under siege, with residents unable to leave their homes and local businesses forced to remain closed since ten Israeli army vehicles invaded at 7PM Friday night. All except two roads out of the village have been blocked by huge earth-mounds.
http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2008/02/11/army-siege-on-azzoun-village-continues/

Hamas sources: P.A Security arrests 13 Hamas members in the West Bank

Hamas media sources reported on Monday that Palestinian Security Forces, loyal to Fateh movement , arrested on Sunday 13 members and supporters of the movement in several areas in the West Bank.
http://www.imemc.org/article/52705

Israeli army kidnaps one in Tulkarem, two from Jenin and continue their attack on the money changers

Israeli military continued their attacks on Tuesday morning on the places of money exchange in several areas of the West Bank. The attacked started in the northern West Bank city of Nablus; the army kidnapped eight of Money changers and the operation extended to the central part of the West Bank in Ramallah city when the army kidnapped another money changer.
http://www.imemc.org/article/52717

IOA holds Palestinian woman in administrative custody after serving her sentence

An Israeli military court ordered the administrative detention of Wadha Fukaha for ten months without trial or charge, citing secret evidence tabled by the Israeli military prosecution. The Palestinian prisoner’s club said that the Israeli judge sanctioned the recommendation depending on the so-called secret file that the defendant and her lawyer could not get hold of at the pretext of preserving secrecy of the source.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/en/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s70%2bQ2pNzKNe2jGWwZGLLyO%2bZUJ%2f4G6I5XuDZr8oXEEz4z7zFPV9i9MNrMiW5EdO0ZMoL4GQT0bHrEQ7hIAsS3rwiSuN1xTiEXYXDie46CClY%3d

Settlers attempt to demolish a Palestinian house in Hebron

The Palestinian Popular (Folk) Committees reported on Monday that an extremist settlers group attempted to demolish a Palestinian house in Bani Neim village, near the southern West Bank city of Hebron.
http://www.imemc.org/article/52706

Israeli authorities demolish a Palestinian-owned house in Jerusalem

The Jerusalem municipality has, on Monday, demolished Palestinian-owned house located in the Wadi Al Jouz area in the eastern suburb of Jerusalem city.
http://www.imemc.org/article/52693

Clinic and 15 homes threatened at Beqa’a Valley

The first permanent medical centre to be built in Beqa’a Valley village is being threatened with demolition along with 15 more houses. The village is located between Kiryat Arba settlement and Route 60 which divides the valley in two.
http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2008/02/11/clinic-and-15-homes-threatened-at-beqaa-valley/

Police arrest 5 Palestinians who petitioned against IAA digs under their homes

The police arrested five Palestinian residents of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan this week, all within a day of their having petitioned the High Court of Justice to stop an Israel Antiquities Authority excavation under their homes.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=953504&contrassID=1&subContrassID=1

Israeli army kidnaps four from Ramallah area, including owner of Money exchange

Israeli military kidnapped four Palestinians from the central West Bank city of Ramallah and the nearby village of ’Arora and attacked several villages in Ramallah district on Tuesday morning.
http://www.imemc.org/article/52713

Israeli army kidnapp 11 Palestinians in Nablus

Israeli army carried out a large-scale abduction campaign included 11 Palestinians among those eight owners of the money exchange in the northern West Bank city of Nablus. The other three were abducted from the Balata refugee camp.
http://www.imemc.org/article/52712

Israeli police seize Palestinian Prime Minister’s advisor in Jerusalem

The Israeli police arrested Hatim Abdul-Qadir, the Palestinian Prime Minister’s advisor for Jerusalem affairs on Tuesday morning. Ma’an’s reporter said that Israeli police seized Abdul-Qadir as he left his house in the Shu’fat neighborhood in northern Jerusalem and took him to an interrogation centre in the Israeli settlement of Nevie Ya’aqov in northern Jerusalem.
http://www.turkishweekly.net/news.php?id=52355

A Palestinian is kidnapped by Special Forces of Israeli army

On Tuesday morning the Special Force of the Israeli army kidnapped a Palestinian from the village of Kafr Qdoum, north of Qalqilia city in the West Bank.
http://www.imemc.org/article/52718

Israeli army pulls out from eastern Gaza as an Israeli soldier wounded

A column of Israeli army tanks rolled back early on Tuesday morning from the eastern neighborhood of Gaza City, after an Israeli army undercover unit attempted to sweep into the neighborhood.
http://www.imemc.org/article/52711

Khalid: Israel approved the construction of 7000 settler home in Jerusalem

Member of the Executive Committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), member of the Political Bureau of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), Taiseer Khalid, stated that the Israeli decision to build 7000 homes for settlers around Jerusalem is another Israeli violation which aims at annexing all Arab areas around the city.
http://www.imemc.org/article/52707

Ehud Barak orders a wide scale offensive in the Gaza Strip

The Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak stated on Monday that he ordered the Israeli army to start preparing for the wide scale offensive against the Gaza Strip.
http://www.imemc.org/article/52694

Hamas warns Israel of heavy price if leaders harmed

Islamic Hamas movement on Monday warned that Israel will pay heavy price if the Jewish state harms Hamas leaders in response to Qassam rocket attacks targeting southern Israel from the Hamas-ruled Gaza.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-02/11/content_7589787.htm

Barak: Goal is to get rid of Hamas

One of the goals of Israel’s operations in the Gaza Strip is to bring about the demise of Hamas rule in the territory, Defense Minister Ehud Barak told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee yesterday.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=953274

Hamas downplays Israeli threats against the group, follows security precautions

The ruling Hamas movement in Gaza considered yesterday the latest Israeli threats against its ranks ’serious’, yet it said such threats wont deter the movement from keeping up.
http://www.imemc.org/article/52719

Bracing for Israeli assault, Hamas forces take cover

With deadly Israeli drones prowling the skies for fresh Hamas targets, lieutenant Atef al-Husary and his men abandoned their police station and set up a makeshift post under a tree.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L12827602.htm

Hamas gov’t says PM lives normal life

Prime Minister Ismail Haneya of the sacked Hamas government lives a normal life and did not go underground though he took some security measures, Hamas administration said on Tuesday. “No one has fled and no one has gone into hiding,” said Taher al-Nounou, spokesman for the deposed Hamas government which rules the Gaza Strip, adding that “he (Haneya) is not afraid.”
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-02/12/content_7594007.htm

Ramon: We will topple Hamas and bring Gaza back to Abbas

Israeli deputy premier Haim Ramon has unveiled on Monday a military scheme of his occupation government that aims at toppling Hamas Movement in Gaza Strip and bringing the Strip back to the control of PA chief Mahmoud Abbas. According to Ramon, the Israeli occupation government will work within few months or at a maximum of one year to quash “Hamas’s rule” in Gaza, and it will bring back Abbas and his security forces back to rule the Strip.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/en/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7pOrLxyxzUSR4r3M1I9pbpPqKfd7QmsFBm9nU6pYfwE6FAML8uP8YbUGYaPPv6OUYZOuSqI5TitrJYHlFkbaTBLid4rQWeGk67Ax5EmzorM8%3d

Fayyad says Israel fails to keep road map promises

Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad on Monday accused Israel of failing to keep its commitments to freeze Jewish settlement activity and to ease checkpoints that limit Palestinian mobility on the West Bank.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N11165039.htm

Settlements, Gaza cloud Israel-Palestinian talks

Israeli plans to build more homes in and around Arab East Jerusalem came under fire on Tuesday from Palestinians who see the city as capital of their future state, casting another shadow over troubled peace talks.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L12220447.htm

Hamas official warns Palestinians will breach Egypt border again if Gaza embargo not lifted

Palestinians will breach the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip again if the blockade of the coastal territory continues, a senior Hamas member warned Monday, defying an Egyptian threat to «break the legs» of anyone who violates the frontier. The comments by Said Siam threatened to worsen already strained relations between Gaza’s Hamas rulers and the Egyptian government.
http://www.pr-inside.com/hamas-official-warns-palestinians-will-r431941.htm

Hamas suspends pro-Fatah daily in ongoing Palestinian media spat

On 10 February 2008, a Hamas-affiliated court in Gaza banned the distribution and publication of Al-Ayyam newspaper, a major Palestinian daily, for publishing a cartoon seen as offensive to lawmakers affiliated to the movement.
http://www.arabmediasociety.com/arab_media_wire/?item=623

Palestinian negotiator refuses statehood without Gaza, Jerusalem

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Monday the Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmoud Abbas won’t accept a future statehood without the Hamas-run Gaza Strip or Jerusalem as its capital.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-02/11/content_7589795.htm

Abducted: Palestinian attorney collecting settlement from Palestinian Development Fund

RAMALLAH — Palestinian Authority officials are suspected of involvement in the abduction of a West Bank attorney. A Palestinian attorney who won a case against the Palestinian Development Fund was abducted as she entered Ramallah to collect a check for her client. The attorney, Amani Abu Arqoub, left her home on Feb. 6 in Dura in the southern West Bank for Ramallah to collect the settlement from PDF offices in Ramallah.
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2008/me_mideast_02_11.asp

ANALYSIS: Hamas banks on IDF invasion to deliver final blow to Abbas
Those who follow the news on Hamas’ Website or hear its spokesmen will have a difficult time deciding who Hamas’ real enemy is. Is it Israel? Egypt’s state media, which launched a media offensive against the organization behind the breach of Egypt’s border? Or is it the Palestinian Authority, depicted as an enemy in cahoots with the Zionist entity?
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=953260&contrassID=1&subContrassID=1

Gaza to be connected to Egyptian power grid in 19 months

The Gaza Strip will be completely connected to the Egyptian electricity network in 19 months, a Palestinian official announced on Monday. Omar Katana, chief of the Palestinian Energy Authority, said that the Gaza Strip would be connected to the Egyptian electricity network via a power plant in the coastal city of al-Arish located in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-02/11/content_7589875.htm

Lack of fuel causes 30% power shortfall in Gaza

Israel’s restriction policy over the fuel shipments to the Gaza Strip caused a power shortage of 30 percent in the poor enclave, a Palestinian official said Sunday.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-02/10/content_7586332.htm

Top reservists: Roadblocks in W. Bank do more harm than good

A group of top Israel Defense Forces reserve officers are set to unveil Wednesday a new position paper according to which the 550 roadblocks in the West Bank serve to increase the motivation to commit terror attacks, and removing a significant portion of them would help calm the security situation and undermine Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/953534.html

Israeli foreign ministry’s token Arab
Ishmael Khaldi has been all the rage amon

gst Israel advocacy groups in the United States, especially in the liberal San Francisco Bay Area. An Arab Bedouin who embraces his Israeli citizenship and has worked for the Israeli police as well as Israel’s occupying army, he was a dream come true for the Israeli consulate, which decided to hire him as Deputy Consul to San Francisco in December 2006. Yaman Salahi reports on Khaldi’s private talk to a group of University of California, Berkeley students organizing “Israeli Apartheid Week.”
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9296.shtml

’I don’t care if our pro-Zionist stance costs us’

Anyone who doesn’t more or less share Marty Peretz’s views on Israel or U.S. politics has little hope of getting a job at The New Republic, the editor-in-chief of the prestigious U.S. journal told Haaretz while in Israel last month. Those views, in short, hold that 60 years after Israel’s independence, the world is once more “in need of a mandate for Palestine,” the journalist and retired Harvard University lecturer said in his suite in the Tel Aviv Hilton. The Palestinians, he says, need to be governed by foreign powers for the time being, because they “do not have yet the attributes to allow them to live peacefully alongside Israel without threatening its civilian population.”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=953302

Sheetrit announces plans for first new Arab city since 1948

Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit said on Tuesday during a visit to the Arab city Umm al-Fahm that he is working to lay the foundations for a new Arab city, the first since 1948.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=953568&contrassID=1&subContrassID=7

OPT: Palestinian farmers hit by prolonged frost in January

A recent cold snap with sub-zero temperatures has caused farmers in the West Bank to incur losses of nearly US$14.5 million, according to initial estimates by the Palestinian ministry of agriculture (MoA) set out in a 6 February joint “fact sheet” with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/LRON-7BQC2Y?OpenDocument&rc=3&emid=ACOS-635PFR

Delegates of the International Mission of United Methodist Churches visit Bethlehem

Delegates of the International Mission of United Methodist Churches visited the West Bank city of Bethlehem and met with Palestinian families in villages and refugee camps around the city. The delegates initially spent three days in Arab areas in Israel in order to observe the living conditions there.
http://www.imemc.org/article/52709

Refugee stories - A boy’s journey from Baghdad to Damascus

Damascus, February 2008 - Given 15 year-old Ibrahim Sayyid’s sunny outlook on life, you would be surprised to learn the challenges he has had to overcome to study plumbing at the UNRWA Damascus Vocational Training Centre. The Agency is sponsoring Ibrahim’s education and providing lodging for him at the Centre during his studies. “I’ve always been at the top of my class,” said Ibrahim as he began telling the story of his journey from Baghdad to Damascus.
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/EGUA-7BQS3W?OpenDocument&rc=3&emid=ACOS-635PFR.html

Education in the West Bank - the future begins here

JERUSALEM-WESTBANK-GAZA - A new boys’ school has opened its doors to 400 students attending the 5th to 9th grades in one of the villages of the West Bank. Built in partnership with World Vision and funded by USAID, the Azzun Basic Boys School was inaugurated in the village of Azzun in the West Bank on February 5, with members of the community and the Palestinian Minister of Higher Education present.
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/AMMF-7BQGXS?OpenDocument

Poll: 100,000 children in Israel have been sexually assaulted

A national poll reveals that some 100,000 children in Israel have been sexually assaulted, but only 2.5 percent of the incidents are reported to the proper authorities. The poll, presented at a National Council for the Child conference in Be’er Sheva on Monday, encompassed 500 polled parents.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=953249&contrassID=1&subContrassID=7

Sapir College prepares to lay off lecturer who refused to teach reservist

Lecturer who refused to teach student because he was wearing IDF uniform will be fired after he did not issue apology by college deadline.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3505527,00.html

Palestine Matters

The suffering in Gaza specifically, and Palestine in general, has not been the subject of any substantive discussion in the 2008 Presidential campaign. There is a code of silence that surrounds this subject and an unspoken assumption that whatever steps Israel needs to take to “ensure its survival” will receive 100% support from the US political establishment.
http://www.blackcommentator.com/263/263_african_world_palestine_matters.html

Protesters Blockade Israeli State Owned Company

For IMMEDIATE RELEASE Press contact: 07986 764432 07745 817822 thewallmustfall@riseup.net 11 February 2007 From around 3pm today Palestine solidarity demonstrators have been blockading Carmel Agrexco’s U.K headquarters in Swallowfield Way, Hayes, Middlesex to highlight the company’s human rights record in occupied Palestine. Protesters were met with violent assaults by Agrexco security guards who smashed a video camera.
http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2008/02/11/protesters-blockade-israeli-state-owned-company/

A Discussion with Walt and Mersheimer, The Power of the Israel Lobby
“Let’s move over here—in the corner. It’ll be better for us to talk in private. Or else some people might get the wrong idea,” chuckles John Mearsheimer, a Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and co-author of the incendiary book, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/ali02112008.html

Interview: Tear down the walls

Jewish academic says Palestinians must tear down separation wall. Norman Finkelstein is one of Israel’s fiercest academic critics and a vocal supporter of the Palestinians.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/59FEE2A5-1461-4119-B852-1045D235566C.htm

The Hawks’ Last Hurrah?

Washington Dispatch: Washington hawks warn Israeli policymakers that they could be on their own on Iran.
http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2008/02/neocons-last-hurrah.html

Israel’s Secret Success

SOMETHING strange is happening to us Zionists in the 60th year of the state of Israel: we are repudiating our astonishing success. If in the 1880s (the start of Zionist settlement in what is now Israel) or in 1948 (the War of Independence) or even in 1967 (the Six-Day War) somebody had said that one day virtually the entire world, including all the Arab nations, would accept the existence of the State of Israel in 78 percent of the land of Israel, he would have been regarded as either idiotically optimistic or clinically insane. That, however, is where we are today. We have won, but we are refusing to accept the result.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/opinion/11gavron.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

The War Against Tolerance

Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zachariah Anani are the three stooges of the Christian right. These self-described former Muslim terrorists are regularly trotted out at Christian colleges-a few days ago they were at the Air Force Academy-to spew racist filth about Islam on behalf of groups such as Focus on the Family. It is a clever tactic. Curly, Larry and Mo, who all say they are born-again Christians, engage in hate speech and assure us it comes from personal experience. They tell their audiences that the only way to deal with one-fifth of the world’s population is by converting or eradicating all Muslims. Their cant is broadcast regularly on Fox News, including the Bill O’Reilly and Neil Cavuto shows, as well as on numerous Christian radio and television programs. Shoebat, who has written a book called “Why We Want to Kill You,” promises in his lectures to explain the numerous similarities between radical Muslims and the Nazis, how “Muslim terrorists” invaded America 30 years ago and how “perseverance, recruitment and hate” have fueled attacks by Muslims.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/11/6978/

God vs. Elliott Abrams

Back in June 2003 Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath came to the White House to meet President Bush for the first time. Shaath relates that Bush told his visitors during their meeting in the Oval Office that God had commanded him to establish a Palestinian state: “God told me, ’George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq,’ and I did. And now I feel God’s words coming to me, ’Go and get the Palestinians their state’ … and by God I’m going to do it.”
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/jtaylor.php?articleid=12349

"Where are you from?"

For Palestinian expatriate nationals like me who have managed to find their way back to Palestine in order to contribute in some fashion, what’s on the horizon is far from clear. Our foothold is tenuous; we are here on sufferance by the Israelis who control the borders and the areas between towns and villages and let us in carefully or not at all. Rima Merriman writes from Jenin.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9294.shtml

U.N. says 4 million Iraqis hungry despite wealth

Four million Iraqis are struggling to feed themselves and 40 percent of the country’s 27 million people have no safe water, despite oil wealth and a booming economy, the U.N. said on Tuesday.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L12717521.htm

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