Day: 5 June 2021

Minister of Health Mai Alkaila said today that 209 new cases of COVID-19, five deaths and 126 recoveries were registered in Palestine during the past 24 hours.

In her daily report on the coronavirus pandemic, Alkaila said four deaths from COVID-19 were reported in the Gaza Strip, while only one death was reported in the West Bank.

In the Gaza Strip, 183 coronavirus tests came out positive, while the West Bank had 26 new cases. No infections were registered in occupied Jerusalem.

The health minister said 21 patients of COVID-19 are under intensive care, of whom two are on ventilators. In addition, 46 patients are receiving treatment at hospitals and COVID-19 dispensaries.

Alkaila pointed out that the recovery rate in Palestine has so far reached 97.5 percent, while active cases declined to 1.4 percent. Deaths stood at 1.1 percent of total infections.

Concerning rollout of vaccines, the health minister said over 373,470 people have received their first jab of the vaccine in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, of whom 234,350 received both doses.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

Israeli occupation forces ordered yesterday the demolition of six Palestinian-owned shops in the village of Umm ar-Rihan, to the west of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, according to a local source.

Ayed Zaid, a member of the village’s local council, told WAFA that the Israeli occupation army informed the owners that the six shops are going to be demolished within a week, under the pretext of lacking an Israeli construction permit.

Zaid said the area where the shops are located falls under the jurisdiction of the local village council and not the so-called Israeli Civil Administration, and that the owners have obtained the necessary construction permits from the village council.

Meantime, Israeli occupation forces confiscated a bulldozer owned by a Palestinian citizen in the nearby town of Ya’bad.

Amjad Atarta, the town’s mayor, said an Israeli army force confiscated the bulldozer which belongs to Zahran Shayeb Atatra, a citizen of Ya’bad, while he was working inside his own farm near the town.

Israel prevents Palestinians from conducting construction works in parts of the West Bank designated as Area C, which falls under administrative and security control of the Israeli occupation.

International law views both the West Bank and East Jerusalem as occupied territories and considers all settlement-building activity there illegal.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

On this day in 1967, the opccupying state of Israel launched a pre-emptive attack against Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Syria. After hitting the air defences of these countries, Israel captured East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, as well as the Syrian Golan Heights and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

Twenty years after being recognised as an independent state on the ruins of historical Palestine, Israel began an occupation that would become the longest in modern history. As such, Israel took control of the final 22 per cent of historic Palestine that it wasn’t able to occupy in 1948.

The term ‘Naksa,’ or the ‘setback,’ refers to the beginning of the 1967 Six Day War on June 5, which saw Israel triple in size beginning over 54 years of occupation.

Nearly 400 thousand Palestinians were displaced by the Israeli onslaught adding to the hundreds of thousands of refugees displaced in 1948 by the invading Zionist pre-Israel militias. Around half were being displaced for the second time in less than 20 years.

The number of Palestinian refugees in the camps run by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon even grew further.

The attack saw Israel disregard the previously agreed upon Green Line borders drawn up in the 1949 armistice with Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, which separated the newly established Israel from the Palestinian areas of the Jordanian-administered West Bank and Jerusalem, and the Egypt-administered Gaza.

Following the onslaught, facilitated with strong backing of the United States, Israel imposed a military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza and annexed East Jerusalem that is going on until today.

Palestinians in the “occupied Palestinian territories” have since been subjected to a brutal Israeli military occupation as well as the activities of armed, right-wing Jewish settlers, for whom Israel’s victory was a licence to colonise the land which they believed was promised to them by God and them alone.

In 2005, Israel pulled out its troops and settlers from Gaza as part of a unilateral disengagement plan under late Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Despite many UN resolutions asking for its withdrawal from these territories, Israel continues to occupy all of the territories except the Sinai Peninsula. Israel withdrew from this territory in 1982, following a peace treaty with Egypt.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

Hundreds of pro-Palestine protesters marched in front of the port of Oakland in California yesterday and wanted to block the delivery of Israeli ship cargo, in a show of the solidarity with the Palestinian people in the aftermath of the Israeli aggression on Gaza.

Approximately 1,000 protesters spread out across six gates at Berth 30 near the Middle Harbor Shoreline Park in the 2700 block of Middle Harbor Road. The demonstrators chanted, “Back up! Back up! We want Freedom, Freedom! All these Zionist attacks, we don’t need ’em, need ’em.”

The protesters also held banners and waved Palestinian flags in support of the movement to impose an economic boycott of Israel following the 11-day Israeli aggression on Gaza.

The ship is an Israeli ZIM operated cargo ship carrying a mixture of products from Asia.

“Our goal today is to show the city of Oakland that we do not want them to do business with and allow Israeli apartheid money to come into our city,” group spokesman Wassim Hage told reporters. “It’s part of an international picket movement at port cities around the world that will be going on over the next couple of weeks.”

A number of truck drivers also blared their horns in support of the gathering, with participants calling for an economic boycott of Israel over its aggression.

Protest organizers said more protesters were on hand and “growing by the minute,” according to a statement from the Arab Resource and Organizing Center. The group posted a photograph of a crowd outside the fence surrounding the Trapac Terminal berth.

ZIM is a publicly held Israeli international cargo shipping company with headquarters in Haifa, Israel, and a North American headquarters in Norfolk, Va.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

Illegal Israeli settlers set up four mobile homes today on a land belonging to the village of Kherbet Zanouta, near the town of ad-Dhahiriya in the occupied West Bank province of Hebron, according to local sources.

Illegal Israeli settlers from the so-called Hilltop Youth organization, escorted by the occupation army, broke into the land in the early morning hours and proceeded to install the four mobile homes in an apparent attempt to establish a new colonial outpost.

The land where the settlers set up the caravans belongs to the Palestinian families of Makharzeh and Jabbarin.

The international community regards all settlements built on land occupied since June 1967 as illegal under international law and calls on Israel to remove them.

Between 500,000 and 700,000 Israeli settlers live in Jewish-only colonial settlements across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of international conventions.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

The Communist Party of Britain has welcomed the upsurge in mass demonstrations around the world in solidarity with the Palestinian people, and called for the protests to continue and even escalate to put pressure on national governments to force Israel to the negotiating table with Palestinian representatives.

‘Persuasion having failed over recent decades, sanctions against the Israeli state are necessary in order to bring such talks about’, said the party’s international secretary John Foster.

‘A two-state solution based on pre-1967 borders, establishing a sovereign state of Palestine alongside a secure Israel, remains the only realistic solution to the ongoing conflict and the oppression of the Palestinians’, Foster insisted.

While describing the removal of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as ‘a step back from conflagration’, he pointed out that the first leader of the new unity coalition government, Naftali Bennett, has been an inflexible supporter of illegal settlements on the Palestinian West Bank.

Britain’s Communists urged a big turnout for the ‘Justice for Palestine’ demonstration opposite 10 Downing Street in London on June 12, called to coincide with US President Biden’s visit to Britain to attend the G7 summit.

‘Unfortunately, EU plans to break up Syria and the military provocations being staged across the Asia-Pacific region by US, British and European NATO forces threaten further conflict in place of cooperation for peace and justice’, Mr Foster declared.

The CPB political committee also urged support for an online meeting, ‘End the Colonial Occupation of Palestine!’, organised for Tuesday June 8 by Liberation. Speakers include Communist Israeli Knesset Member Aida Touma-Suleiman, Jeremy Corbyn MP and Aqel Taqas of the Palestinian People’s Party.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

The United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken said today that his country was interested in rebuilding the relationship with the Palestinian people.

In a tweet, Blinken said he had an important conversation with Palestinian-American leaders ‘’about the violence in Israel, the West Bank & Gaza,’’ he said in reference to the recent Israeli aggression on Gaza which killed 260 Palestinians.

‘’We are committed to rebuilding our relationship with the Palestinian people. Israelis & Palestinians deserve equal measures of security, freedom, opportunity and dignity.’’

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

Israeli police violently attacked today Palestinians and activists taking part in a peaceful sit-in protest in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, held against the Israeli occupation attempts to forcibly expel hundreds of Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah in favor of Israeli settlers.

Israeli police attacked with stun grenades and tear gas canisters protesters who gathered in Sheikh Jarrah in solidarity with the Palestinian families facing the imminent threat of forced expulsion from their homes.

Protester chanted slogans condemning the Israeli occupation policy of apartheid and calling on the international community to promptly move to stop the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

Israeli occupation forces today denied access of Palestinian farmers and banned them from working inside their land in the village of Husan, to the west of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, according to local sources.

Mohammad Hamamreh, a local Palestinian farmer, told WAFA that Israeli occupation soldiers denied them access into their own land, which is located inside the illegal Israeli settlement of Bitar Elit, illegally built on Palestinian-owned land.

He said the land is a source of livelihood for several Palestinian households in the village.

Of note, Israeli occupation forces and armed Israli settlers repeatedly harass Palestinian farmers working on their land and usually chase them out of their land.

Armed settlers and soldiers also prevent Palestinian shepherds from herding in the open pastures of the occupied West Bank in order to force them to abandon the area.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

A nine-year-old Palestinian child was shot in the arm with rubber-coated steel bullets as Israeli forces attacked a peaceful anti-settlement demonstration in the village of Kufr Qaddoum, east of Qalqilia, the occupied West Bank, according to local sources.

Sources told WAFA Israeli forces attacked demonstrators with rubber-coated metal bullets and tear gas canisters, shooting and injuring a nine-year-old child in the arm as well as causing the suffocation of dozens of others from inhaling the tear gas.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency