Day: 20 October 2021

Cold conditions are expected today in Palestine as temperature is 4°C below the seasonal average and a chance of light rain expected in some areas, according to the Palestinian Meteorological Department (PMD).

Winds are westerly to northwesterly, moderate to active, and sea waves are low to medium.

Temperature in the capital, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem is expected to reach a high of 21°C and a low of 14°C and in Ramallah and Hebron a high of 20°C and a low of 13°C. In Jericho, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan Valley temperature is expected to reach a high of 30°C and a low of 20°C while it is expected to reach a high of 24°C and a low of 17°C in Gaza and the coastal areas.

A rise in temperature is expected tomorrow, Thursday, but remains 2°C below the seasonal average.

A further rise in temperature is expected on Friday and Saturday to become around the annual average, said the PMD.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

Israeli settlers today stole harvesting tools and olive crops from lands in the northern occupied West Bank, according to an official source.

Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian Authority official who monitors settler activities, told WAFA that residents of Qaryout village, south of Nablus, noticed when they arrived at their fields this morning that the olive harvest tools they were using to pick the olives in their lands located near the illegal settlement of Shavot Rahel were missing.

He said the farmers also stopped Israeli settlers who was stealing their crops and kicked them out of their lands.

Settlers intensify their assault against Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest season, considered one of the main sources of income for Palestinians. They often synchronize their raids and assaults with soldiers, who provide them with cover and protection.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

Israeli military bulldozers today destroyed about 10 dunums of Palestinian agricultural land near Wad Rahal village, south of the southern West Bank city of Bethlehem, for settlement purposes, according to Hasan Breijieh, from the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission.

He told WAFA that the bulldozers razed land owned by a local resident planted with olive saplings and other crops.

The military government, he said, is razing and expropriating Palestinian land in that area for settlement purposes as local residents attempt to confront these measures.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

Nisreen Abu Kmeil, 46, from Haifa, was today allowed by the Israeli occupation authorities to be reunited with her seven children and husband in the Gaza Strip after a three-day delay following her release from prison in Israel where she completed a six-year sentence for resisting the occupation, according to the Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Commission.

After her release on Sunday, the Israeli authorities refused to allow her to travel to Gaza where she lived for 20 years to be with her family claiming she owed the state a little bit over $1000 in back TV tax, the Commission’s spokesman, Hasan Abed Rabbo, told WAFA.

Abu Kmeil was hosted by different families in the West Bank until finally Israel gave her permission to cross Beit Hanoun/Erez checkpoint in southern Israel into Gaza.

Her permission to return to Gaza was not without conditions, nevertheless. In addition to paying the alleged overdue TV tax, she was banned from returning to Haifa, where she was born and her other family lives, for two years.

Abu Kmeil left behind an 8-month old son when she was arrested in October 2015 and her oldest daughter, Amira, was 11 years old. Her children were not allowed to visit her in prison during her incarceration.

With her release from prison, 32 other Palestinian women remain incarcerated in Israel for their resistance activities, including mothers. Israel is currently holding over 4500 Palestinians in prison, including 200 minors and over 350 administrative detainees.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

A 61-year-old Palestinian from Jerusalem held in Israel, who was denied freedom after the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians in 1993, completed today 35 years behind bars, according to the Palestinian Prisoner Society (PPS).

It said Samir Ibrahim Abu Nimeh, who was arrested in 1986 and sentenced to life in prison for his resistance of the Israeli occupation, is one of 25 Palestinian freedom fighters held since before the signing of the Oslo Accords who were supposed to be freed in 2014 in a US-brokered deal before Israel reneged on the agreement and the peace process collapsed as a result.

The PPS said Abu Nimeh is suffering from various health issues due to his long incarceration in bad prison conditions and torture at the time of his arrest as well as medical negligence.

He lost his mother and three of his brothers who died during his imprisonment. One of his brothers died on the eve of a planned visit to Abu Nimeh in prison in 2016, said the PPS.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said today during an olive picking event in the north of the West Bank that the olive tree symbolizes resistance in the face of settler colonialism.

Speaking while picking olives with local residents in the city of Salfit that his government will do all it can to help the farmers sustain on their lands.

“The olive tree symbolizes our resistance in the face of settler colonialism. We’re in Salfit today to pick olives with our people here: we affirmed the government’s commitment to exerting all possible efforts to support the farmers’ steadfastness in Salfit and all of Palestine,” said the Prime Minister, explaining that since the Israeli occupation started in 1967, Israel uprooted more than 2.5 million trees in Palestine, including 800,000 olive trees.

“This shows that Israel wants to uproot not only the people from their lands and homes, but also the trees,” he said.

“The attacks on the trees, the stones and the people in Palestine were on the agenda of the (United Nations) Security Council this week,” said Shtayyeh. “Our battle with the occupation is on the ground and our battle is a battle of steadfastness.”

The olive harvest season is meant to be an annual celebratory time in Palestine. However, the joyful time has become overshadowed by Israeli land restrictions and brutal settler attacks.

Settlers have recently stepped up their attacks against olive harvesters throughout the West Bank.

Over 9,000 olive trees have been destroyed in the West Bank since August 2020, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which called on Israel to ensure safe, timely, and adequate access for Palestinians to their olive groves in the occupied West Bank.

With more than 12 million olive trees planted across 45% of the West Bank’s agricultural land, the olive harvest constitutes one of the biggest sources of economic sustainability for thousands of Palestinian families.

According to UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA) in the occupied Palestinian territory, the olive oil industry supports the livelihoods of more than 100,000 families and accounts for a quarter of the gross agricultural income of the occupied territories.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

Five people died of coronavirus in Palestine in the last 24 hours while 275 new cases were recorded in which Minister of Health Mai Alkaila said was a break in the current wave of the pandemic with a noticeable decrease in the number of new cases.

Three of the deaths and 94 of the new cases were recorded in the West Bank, while two deaths and 181 new cases were confirmed in the Gaza Strip.

At the same time, 157 corona patients have recovered in the West Bank and 624 in the Gaza Strip for a total of 96.4 percent recovered of the total cases recorded in Palestine since the outbreak of the pandemic in March of last year. Deaths remain at 1 percent while the currently active cases stand at 2.6 percent.

According to Alkaila, 108 people are currently getting treatment for coronavirus in hospitals, and 58 are in intensive care, while 11 are on ventilators.

She also said that over 1.2 million people have been vaccinated twice for the pandemic and over 10,000 have already received the booster shot.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

The municipality of the Arab city of Umm al-Fahm, in northern Occupied Palestine 1948, declared in a statement a one-day general strike tomorrow to protest the rising violence and killings in Arab communities.

During an emergency session, the municipality discussed ways to address the murders that took place in the city and claimed the lives of three young men.

The strike includes shops, public and private institutions, and schools, with the exception of private education.

The municipality called for a sit-in in front of the Israeli police station on Saturday.

Eight people have been killed in Umm al-Fahm since the beginning of this year.

Palestinians in Israel accuse the police and government of discriminating against them and not doing enough to stop crime in their towns compared to Jewish towns.

Several protests and calls by the Palestinians in Israel, who make up more than 20 percent of the Israeli population, on the government and police to fight the rise in crime in their towns have not yet yielded any significant results with less than a fifth of the crimes be resolved or criminals apprehended.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency

Palestinian Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Rola Ma’aya announced today that Palestine has resumed allowing tourists to enter Palestine and to stay in its hotels starting November 6.

The government suspended all foreign tourism to Palestine with the start of the corona pandemic in March of last year as a safety procedure. However, with a noticeable decrease of corona cases in Palestine, the ministry decided to ease the restrictions and allow tourism back.

Palestine expects tens of thousands of tourists to arrive in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, for the upcoming Christmas season.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency