Day: 16 March 2022

The Israeli military government barred Palestinian farmers from reclaiming more than 700 dunums of their lands in the village of Irtas, south of the southern West Bank city of Bethlehem, according to Irtas deputy head of village council Awad Abu Sway.

He told WAFA that an army unit broke into the southern area of the village and posted orders against reclaiming the land that belongs to several families.

By keeping the land barren by force, Israel can later claim that its Palestinian owners have abandoned it and therefore take it over to build settlements.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) condemned roundly what it described as yesterday’s “criminal field execution” of three Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli occupation forces.

It said in a statement that “this new series of executions reflect a dangerous escalation in the continuous Israeli crimes and aggression against the Palestinian people,” noting that Israeli occupation forces have killed 20 Palestinians and injured hundreds of others since the start of this year.

The OIC held Israel, as the occupying power, “fully responsible for the fallout of this dangerous escalation,” calling on the international community “to shoulder its responsibility to provide the international protection that the Palestinian people need, and to hold the occupying power of Israel accountable for its incessant violations and assault on the Palestinians, their land and their holy places.”

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

The family of a critically ill Palestinian freedom fighter incarcerated in Israel has called on international humanitarian and legal organizations to secure the release of its son in order to get proper treatment outside jail, today said the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs.

Nasser Abu Hmeid, 49, from Amari refugee camp in Ramallah who has been in prison since 2002 and serving seven life terms plus 50 years for his resistance of the Israeli occupation, is suffering from lung cancer, and, according to his family, his health has gravely deteriorated.

Abu Hmeid’s brother, Mohammad, told the Commission’s attorney Karim Ajweh after visiting his brother at Ramleh prison clinic in the center of Israel, that x-ray images showed that the cancer is spreading in his left lung and affecting the arteries and heart.

He said Nasser has difficulty talking, lost weight, and vomits constantly, in addition to having pain all over his body, mainly in his head, and has to breathe through an oxygen mask at most times, expressing concern that cancer may have spread to the head.

Mohammad has urged international humanitarian organizations, particularly the Red Cross, to intervene with the Israeli occupation authorities to have his brother released in order to get treatment abroad before cancer kills him.

Nasser Abu Hmeid has four other siblings serving long prison sentences in Israel for their resistance activities and one brother was killed by the Israeli occupation forces. The family home in Amari camp was demolished several times by the Israelis, the last of which was in 2019.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

The funeral today of Sanad al-Harbad, 27, who was shot and killed yesterday by an undercover Israeli police unit in the Israeli Arab town of Rahat in the Naqab desert in the south of Israel, highlighted the anti-Arab policies and attitude of the Israeli government.

Hundreds of people participated in the funeral in Rahat, which today observed a general strike in protest against the killing, with mourners strongly denouncing the killing of al-Harbad, a father of three children, demanding the firing of the chief of police in the southern command and opening an investigation into what they stressed was unjustified shooting and killing of al-Harbad.

“The killing of a person by the Israeli police during an arrest operation demands explanation,” said the head of the local council in Rahat Fayez Abu Seheiban. “There is an urgent need for an in-depth investigation,” he said, bringing into mind the killing in 2015 of another young resident of Rahat without reaching a conclusive reason for the shooting at that time that left Sami al-Jaar dead.

The Higher Steering Committee for the Arabs of the Naqab held the Israeli government responsible for the killing of al-Harbad and demanded the firing of the head of the southern command in the Israeli police.

“The Naqab is facing a campaign of systematic incitement and distortions,” it said. “The crime of shooting al-Harbad by a unit disguised as Bedouins in an old Toyota jeep, leaving him bleeding and preventing ambulances from reaching him for an hour is a crime in itself.”

The committee called for the formation of an independent commission of inquiry to determine the circumstances of the killing of al-Harbad and to prosecute those responsible, stressing that it is unacceptable that the government and police deal with the Arab communities in Israel in a hostile manner.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

Six people have died of coronavirus in Palestine over the previous two days and 312 new cases were confirmed, today said the Ministry of Health.

Four people died in the Gaza Strip where 160 new cases were confirmed and 720 corona patients have recovered, one person died in the West Bank where 82 new cases and 186 recoveries were recorded, and one person died in East Jerusalem, 70 new cases were confirmed and 150 patients have recovered.

The Ministry said 44 patients suffering from coronavirus remain in hospitals, 30 are in intensive care, and eight are attached to ventilators.

It also said that more than 50 percent of the Palestinians have been vaccinated against Covid-19 (62.5 percent in the West Bank and 34.1% percent in the Gaza Strip).

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)