Day: 4 October 2021

Twelve people have died of coronavirus in Palestine in the last 24 hours as 1559 new cases were confirmed, today said Minister of Health Mai Alkaila.

She said in her daily report on the pandemic in Palestine that 10 people died in the Gaza Strip where 1220 new cases were recorded and 1000 patients have recovered.

The West Bank has two corona-related deaths, 339 new cases, and 488 recoveries.

Alkaila said 189 corona patients are in hospitals and 73 are in intensive care, while 17 are on ventilators.

She said 2,214,765 people have been vaccinated against the pandemic while 1,627,096 have received a second dose and 2218 people have received a third dose, all in the West Bank.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

President Mahmoud Abbas received last night three members of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, from the leftist Meretz party, two of them ministers in the current Israeli government, during which they discussed peace in the Middle East.

The Israeli delegation included Nitzan Horowitz, head of Meretz party and Minister of Health, Issawi Freij, Minister of Regional Cooperation, and Michal Rosen, Knesset member.

President Abbas stressed the importance of ending the Israeli occupation and establishing just and comprehensive peace as per international resolutions. He also stressed the need to stop settlement construction, military incursions, home demolitions, displacement of people, and return of withheld bodies of Palestinians killed by Israelis.

He also warned against escalating measures against Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

The Meretz party delegation stressed their support for the two-state solution, ending the occupation and joint cooperation to build bridges of trust. They also stressed the importance of cooperation in the health sector.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

Israeli military vehicles today infiltrated the southern Gaza Strip borders, razed Palestinian-owned lands and built dirt mounds, reported WAFA correspondent.

He said that several military vehicles breached the Gaza border to the east of the city of Khan Younis, south of the Gaza Strip, went in dozens of meters of agricultural land as army bulldozers razed lands and built mounds of dirt amidst shooting in the air.

Israeli forces regularly breach the borders of the besieged Gaza Strip, destroy lands, and prevent farmers from accessing and plowing their lands near the border fence.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

Palestinians have complained that Israeli settlers have stolen the olive crops from their lands located either behind the apartheid barrier or near the illegal colonies.

Khalil Taqtaq, a landowner from Salfit, in the north of the West Bank, told WAFA today that when a local farmer had a chance yesterday to reach his land near the illegal settlement of Arial, built on usurped Salfit land, he found out that the settlers had stolen the crops from his olive trees.

He said the farmer owns 26 trees on more than 50-dunum plot of land.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry has warned against settler assault on Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest season, which has just started, and said in a statement that international silence to organized settlers’ terrorism will have serious ramifications on the ground.

“Prior to and during the olive harvest season, attacks by settlers and Jewish terrorists against Palestinians escalate, sometimes by preventing them from reaching their land to harvest olives, others through attacks and assaults on Palestinian citizens participating in the harvest, and sometimes by burning, destroying and chopping hundreds of olive trees in many areas of the occupied West Bank or stealing olive crops, as happens every year,” said the Foreign Ministry.

The olive harvest season is considered one of the most important seasons in Palestine as thousands of farmers depend on this harvest for their livelihood.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor and the Global Institute for Water, Environment and Health (GIWEH) said in a joint oral statement during the 48th session of Human Rights Council (HRC) that the long-term Israeli blockade has caused a serious deterioration of water security in Gaza, making 97% of the water contaminated, while the residents of the besieged enclave are forced to witness the slow poisoning.

Euro-Med Monitor and GIWEH talked in their statement about the severe deterioration in the Gaza Strip’s water security, mainly due to Israel’s prolonged siege, punctuated by periodic military assaults.

It’s now well established that 97% of Gaza’s water has become contaminated; a situation made substantially worse by an acute electricity crisis that stifles the operation of water wells and sewage treatment plants, leading about 80% of Gaza’s untreated sewage to be discharged into the sea while 20% seeps into underground water, said the joint statement.

Further compounding this water crisis is Israel’s attacks on Gaza last May that substantially pounded the enclave’s already decaying infrastructure, especially in the water sector, it said.

“This water crisis presents a serious threat to the beleaguered population’s health, where recent data indicates that about a quarter of the diseases spread in Gaza are caused by water pollution, and 12% of the deaths of young children and infants are linked to intestinal diseases related to contaminated water.”

So, in complete: a civilian population caged in a toxic slum from birth to death are forced to witness the slow poisoning of their children and loved ones by the water they drink and likely the soil in which they harvest, endlessly, with no change in sight, added the statement.

“There is no possible justification whatsoever for this situation.”

It’s incumbent on the occupying authority and international community to fully guarantee Gazans’ right to water security, the statement concluded.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

The Israeli occupation authorities today notified to demolish Palestinian structures in Masafer Yatta area and Birin village, in the south of the West Bank, according to local sources.

Coordinator of the Protection and Steadfastness Committees in Masafer Yatta, Fouad al-Amour, told WAFA that Israeli forces told residents in Birin, Fakhit and Khallet al-Dabi hamlets that tents, tin-sheet structures, sheds, and two caravans are going to be removed and demolished.

The soldiers also took photos for the recently-rehabilitated road linking Khallet al-Dabi to Masafer Yatta in addition to three water wells of a nature reserve in the area apparently in order to demolish them.

Masafer Yatta is a collection of almost 19 hamlets which rely heavily on animal husbandry as the main source of livelihood. They are located in Area C of the West Bank, under full Israeli administrative and military control.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military ordered Qarawat Bani Hassan town, south of the northern West Bank city of Salfit, to stop work and construction in an area of the town known as Dar al-Darb claiming it is classified as Area C, according to the town’s mayor Hassan Assi.

He told WAFA that the municipality was building a stone chain wall in order to build a park in that area when they were ordered to stop the work.

Dar al-Darb is a four-dunum archeological area believed to go back to the Roman period and there is fear that Israeli settlers intend to take it over.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

The Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs Commission said Mohammad Arda, one of six Palestinian prisoners who escaped from a high-security Israeli jail on September 6 and were recaptured days later, embarked today on an open-ended hunger strike in protest against the Israeli prison service punitive measures against him and the harsh conditions of his solitary confinement.

The commission’s lawyer, Kareem Ajwa, said new punitive measures were imposed on Arda following an internal hearing that was held at Asqalan prison, where Arda was transferred six days ago, including keeping him in isolation for 14 days without any personal belongings, banning him from family visits and buying essentials from the canteen for two months, in addition to imposing financial fines on him.

Arda is being isolated without blankets and a pillow in a small, dirty, and unventilated cell that lacks the basic humanitarian requirement. Arda told the lawyer that he has not been able to take a shower for days because he is being monitored around the clock by surveillance cameras.

Mahmoud Abdallah Arda, 46, from Arraba town near Jenin, was arrested in 1996 and serving a life sentence.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

A Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem was forced to demolish his own house in Sour Baher, south of the city of Jerusalem, to avoid paying high costs and fines after he received a demolition order from the Israeli municipality of West Jerusalem.

The house owner, Mohammed al-Khatib, said the Israeli municipality forced him to tear down his 80-square-meter house under the pretext of construction without a permit or else it will demolish it and obligate him to pay the exorbitant costs.

The owner said that he has spent approximately more than $24,000 in legal fees to appeal the demolition decision of his house while the Israeli municipality first told him to continue work on the house but then kept renewing the freezing and halting of construction orders until it issued a final decision to demolish the house.

Using the pretext of building without a permit, which is rarely granted to Palestinians in the occupied city, the Israeli municipality has condemned hundreds of Palestinian-owned houses as part of a policy aimed to restrict Palestinian expansion and number in occupied Jerusalem.

At the same time, the municipality and government build tens of thousands of housing units in illegal settlements in East Jerusalem for Jews with a goal to offset the demographic balance in favor of the Jewish settlers in the occupied city.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency