Day: 8 January 2022

Minister of Health Mai Alkaila said today that 156 new cases of COVID-19, five deaths and 235 recoveries were registered in Palestine during the last 24 hours.

In her daily report on the coronavirus pandemic, Alkaila said two deaths from COVID-19 were registered in the West Bank, while another three deaths were recorded in Gaza.

A total of 3,295 COVID-19 tests were conducted during the reporting period. In the Gaza Strip, 42 coronavirus tests came out positive, while the West Bank had 114 new cases. No updates were available regarding the situation in occupied East Jerusalem.

The Health Minister said that in the West Bank, 107 patients of COVID-19 are currently hospitalized, of whom 57 are in intensive care, including 23 on ventilators.

She pointed out that the recovery rate in Palestine has so far reached 98.1 percent, while active cases reached 0.8 percent. Deaths stood at 1.1 percent of total infections.

Source: Palestinian News & Information Agency

The Israeli occupation army tonight shut down the main entrance to the village of Burqa in the occupied West Bank province of Nablus, denying access of Palestinian vehicles, according to witnesses.

Ghassan Daghlas, an official who monitors Israeli settlement activities in the north of the West Bank, told WAFA that the Israeli occupation army shut down the entrance to the village following clashes with Palestinian protesters in the area. As a result of the closure, vehicles were forced to use longer alternative routes.

Over the past month, the village has been a frequent target of daily attacks by Israeli settlers from the neighboring settlement of Shavei Shomron.

Most of these attacks by Israeli settlers, which included arsons and pelting stones on homes, occurred under the protection of the Israeli occupation army.

Source: Palestinian News & Information Agency

More than 20 international performers have pulled out of the 2022 Sydney Festival over what they say the “artwashing” of the Israeli apartheid and oppression of the Palestinian people, reports have said.

The mass boycott of the event came after Israel was listed as a partner of the annual festival after its embassy in Australia made a $20,000 donation in support of an Israeli choreographer.

The Palestinian Justice Movement Sydney pointed out that the deal was orchestrated in May 2021, when Israel launched a major attack on the Gaza Strip in which more than 250 Palestinians were killed.

“Palestine advocates call on all opponents of apartheid to boycott the 2022 Sydney Festival,” it said.

“By partnering with Israel, Sydney festival will … contribute to the normalization of an apartheid regime.”

An open letter titled Do Better on Palestine called on the festival organizers to cancel its partnership with the Israeli government.

“Israel has long used culture and the arts to cloak its atrocities against the Palestinian people,” the letter stated.

“The Sydney Festival Star Partnership with the Israeli embassy” serves to “artwash” the Israeli regime’s “violent control over the lives of Palestinians and enables the apartheid regime to continue to breach the human rights of Palestinians with impunity,” it added.

At least 23 performances have so far pulled out of the festival in protest at the Israeli sponsorship of the event.

Source: Palestinian News & Information Agency

For eight consecutive days, Palestinian prisoners held without trial or charge in Israeli jails are continuing their boycott of Israel’s military courts in protest of Israel’s controversial policy of administrative detention.

At the onset of this year, some 500 Palestinian administrative detainees started refusing to show up for their court sessions. The boycott includes the hearings to approve or renew the administrative detention order, as well as appeal hearings and later sessions at the Supreme Court.

Under the banner, “Our decision is freedom … no to administrative detention,” administrative detainees have said in a statement their move comes as a continuation of longstanding Palestinian efforts “to put an end to the unjust administrative detention practiced against our people by the occupation forces”.

They also noted that Israel’s use of the policy has expanded in recent years to include women, children and elderly people.

Administrative detention is an Israeli policy that allows the indefinite detention of prisoners without trial or charge based on “secret evidence” that neither the detainee nor his lawyer is allowed to see. At least four Palestinian children are detained under such orders.

Human rights groups describe Israel’s use of the practice as “systematic and arbitrary”, and as a form of collective punishment, noting that its extensive use constitutes a violation of international law “particularly relating to internationally recognized principles of a fair trial.”

“Administrative detention is regularly employed as a coercive and retaliatory measure targeting Palestinian activists, civil society members, students, former prisoners, and their family members,” Addameer says.

The widely condemned policy of administrative detention allows the detention of Palestinians without charge or trial for renewable periods ranging between three and six months based on undisclosed evidence that even a detainee’s lawyer is not allowed to review.

Source: Palestinian News & Information Agency

The Palestinian Central Elections Commission (CEC) said today that the number of currently registered voters in the localities that are included in the second phase of the local elections reached more than 785,000 citizens; or 89% of eligible voters, 17 years or older.

It said in a press release that it opened today, and for five days, the Registration, Exhibition and Challenge period for the second phase of the local elections, which is scheduled to be held on March 26 and will include all the cities and major towns in the West Bank not included in the first phase held in December.

The CEC said it opened 358 Registration, Exhibition and Challenge centers across 102 localities in the West Bank only since the de facto authorities in the Gaza Strip have not agreed to allow local elections to be held in the besieged sea enclave.

The CEC said on January 1 that it received a letter from the Islamic Resistance Movement – Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, about its position on holding the second phase of the local elections in the Gaza Strip. The letter, it said, included certain conditions for allowing elections to be held there.

CEC Chairman Hanna Nasir said that the conditions, which he described as “political”, require addressing the political level and that the CEC does not have any mandate to decide on any of the matters. He said that until this happens, the CEC considers that the local elections cannot possibly be currently held in Gaza.

The first phase of local elections was held on December 11 in 153 small and medium-sized localities only in the West Bank after Hamas has also refused to allow them to be held in 11 localities in the Gaza Strip. Another 162 localities in the West Bank did not have any elections since there was only one running list, which won by acclamation, and that 61 other localities have failed to submit lists and therefore were moved to the second phase of the elections on 26 March. Turnout for the first phase was 66.14 percent of the eligible voters.

With the inclusion of the 61 localities from the first phase and the 11 from the Gaza Strip, the overall number of localities included in the second phase has become 127 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, assuming elections are going to be held in the 25 Gaza localities as well, which leaves only the 102 localities in the West Bank. The number of eligible voters in all West Bank and Gaza localities has reached more than 1.8 million, said the CEC.

Local elections will not be held in refugee camps across the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which have a special status, or in occupied East Jerusalem where Israel does not allow any Palestinian elections in the annexed part of the city where over 350,000 Palestinians live.

Source: Palestinian News & Information Agency