Day: 23 May 2022

Weather today in Palestine is partially cloudy to clear and relatively cold during the day with another drop in temperature approaching 4°C below the seasonal average with a chance of scattered rain during the morning hours, particularly in the northern and central districts, according to the Palestinian Meteorological Department (PMD).

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

Temperature in the capital, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem is expected to reach a high of 21°C and a low of 13°C, and in Ramallah and Hebron a high of 20°C and a low of 12°C. In Jericho, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan Valley temperature is expected to reach a high of 30°C and a low of 19°C, while it is expected to reach a high of 23°C and a low of 17°C in Gaza and the coastal areas.

Temperature rises again on Tuesday to become around the seasonal average, said the PMD.

A significant rise in temperature is expected on Wednesday approaching 3°C above the seasonal average, paving the way for hot to very hot conditions to prevail.

Thursday’s temperature is expected to rise again, becoming 4°C above the seasonal average.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has ruled that “Product of Israel” labels affixed to wines produced in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank violate Canadian consumer protection law.

The agency said in its ruling that the wines were not produced within the internationally-recognized borders of Israel and that their labels do not mention that they were made in an area of the occupied West Bank.

The CFIA decision came in the implementation of legal decisions made in favor of David Kattenburg’s five-year legal battle over the labeling of wines produced in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

In 2017, David Kattenburg, then a resident of Winnipeg, filed a complaint with the agency about two wines made in the West Bank settlements of Psagot and Shiloh. He argued they should not be deemed products of Israel under Canadian law because they were from Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.

The agency initially sided with Kattenburg but reversed its decision after Global Affairs Canada noted the West Bank was included under the Canada-Israel free trade agreement.

The ruling is expected to include more products made in illegal settlements.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

A ruling by the Israeli Magistrate Court in Jerusalem allowing extremist Jews to perform some kind of prayers at the Muslim holy site, Al-Aqsa Mosque, in Jerusalem and its implications were highlighted on the front page of the three Palestinian Arabic dailies published today.

The papers highlighted the wide condemnation of this ruling with al-Hayat al-Jadida daily saying that the Palestinian presidency has warned against allowing Jews to pray at the Muslim holy site.

Al-Ayyam daily quoted the Palestinian Foreign Ministry saying that the ruling was a declaration of a religious war.

The third daily, Al-Quds, said Jordan also condemned this ruling saying it is null and void.

The paper also quoted Hamas officials warning Israel against continuing with plans to intervene in the affairs of Al-Aqsa Mosque and occupied East Jerusalem.

In other front-page news, al-Ayyam quoted a leader in the Jewish terrorist Kach organization calling on the Israeli government to demolish Al-Aqsa Mosque as soon as possible. It said this call was made only two days after Washington removed the terror organization from its list of so-called terrorist groups.

Al-Quds said in a related news item that extremist Jewish groups are mobilizing their members to break into Al-Aqsa Mosque on May 29 during the so-called “flags march.”

Al-Hayat al-Jadida said the presidency has warned Israel against allowing the extremist Israelis to have their “flags march” go through the Muslim quarter in Jerusalem’s old city.

Al-Quds said a US official’s visit to an illegal settlement in the occupied city of Hebron encourages Israeli settlements, describing it as obvious support of settlements and crimes committed by settlers against the Palestinian people.

Al-Ayyam highlighted another Israeli court’s ruling sentencing the six freedom fighters who broke out from Gilboa prison on September 6 of last year and others who allegedly assisted them to various prison sentences and fines.

Al-Quds said after a two-month interruption, education is back to normal at West Bank schools.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

A ruling by the Israeli Magistrate’s Court in Jerusalem allowing certain Jewish prayer at Al-Aqsa Mosque, a purely Muslim holy site located in Jerusalem’s old city, has drawn strong condemnation at home and abroad and warning of serious consequences.

The Palestinian presidency warned in a statement against the decision of the Israeli court’s ruling considering it a serious violation of the existing historical status quo in Al-Haram Al-Sharif, which includes Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, and flagrant defiance of international law and United Nations resolutions.

The presidency also warned against allowing the provocative Israeli “flags march” to take place in occupied Jerusalem on May 29.

The presidency called on the US administration to immediately intervene to stop the Israeli assaults on the Palestinian people and their holy places.

It also called on the Palestinian people to confront these assaults, stressing that Jerusalem, with its Christian and Muslim citizens and their holy places, will remain the eternal capital of the State of Palestine.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates also strongly condemned the decision of the Magistrate’s Court allowing Jewish extremists to perform rituals and prayers inside the Muslim holy place, considering it an official Israeli coup against the status quo and changing it completely and an explicit declaration of religious war that threatens of an explosion in the entire region.

The Ministry said the court’s ruling is new proof that the Israeli judiciary and court system in Israel is an integral part of the occupation regime and another evidence of providing legal cover for the incursions of Jewish extremists into the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque with the aim of consolidating its division.

It said it holds the Israeli government fully and directly responsible for this decision and its serious consequences, calling on the international community, especially the US administration, for an immediate intervention to stop its implementation.

Meanwhile, the Jordanian Foreign Ministry also issued a statement condemning the Israeli court’s ruling, saying this decision is null and void and has no legal weight as per international law which does not recognize Israel’s court jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Haitham Abu al-Fool stressed that the court’s decision is a flagrant violation of international resolutions on Jerusalem, including Security Council resolutions, all of which emphasize the need to preserve the status of the Holy City.

The decision is a serious violation of the historical and legal status of the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque, said Abu al-Fool, stressing that Jordan, in accordance with international law, does not recognize the Israeli judiciary’s authority over occupied Jerusalem.

He warned against allowing Jewish extremists from violating the sanctity of Al-Aqsa Mosque, stressing that the Mosque, in its entire 144-dunum area, is a purely Muslim holy place and that the Waqf department, which is part of the Jordanian government, is the only legal party responsible for the affairs of the Mosque and who will be allowed to enter or visit it.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

Israeli forces today and last night detained at least 11 Palestinians in the occupied territories according to various sources.

They said that Israeli forces rounded up four Palestinians after breaking into and ransacking the houses of their families in the Ramallah district.

One of the four detainees was identified as a resident of Ni‘lin town, west of Ramallah city, another as a resident of Kafr Nimeh town, northwest of the city, another as a resident of Kharbatha al-Misbah town, west of the city, in addition to an undergraduate university student from Birzeit town, north of the city.

In the southern West Bank, soldiers raided Harmala village, southeast of Bethlehem, and arrested a former prisoner.

They also showed up at a house in Tuqoa town, east of Bethlehem city, forcibly entered and searched a house and detained one person.

Still in the southern West Bank, the sources confirmed a raid in the southern area of Hebron city, resulting in the detention of a 14-year-old teen.

In the northern West Bank, several military vehicles stormed Balata refugee camp, east of Nablus, where the soldiers broke into a house, ransacked it, and detained one person.

In Jenin district, soldiers broke into Rummana village, northwest of Jenin city, and detained another.

They also detained another in a raid that triggered confrontations in Zababdeh town, south of the city.

On Sunday evening, Israeli police detained four teenagers after assaulting them in al-Wad Street in the old city of Jerusalem.

A resident of Silwan neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem was detained after appearing before Israeli intelligence at the Russian Compound detention and interrogation facility.

Palestinian prisoner advocacy groups said today that the Israeli occupation authorities detained 1228 Palestinians during April, including 165 minors and 11 women.

They said this was the highest number of arrests since the start of the year and most of the cases were from occupied East Jerusalem.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

Israeli occupation forces today knocked down three agricultural rooms in Kafr al-Dik town, west of Salfit in the northern West Bank, and issued demolition orders against three other houses in Masafer Yatta area in the south of the West Bank, according to local sources.

In Kafr al-Dik, Israeli forces cordoned off the Kafriya area in the northern part of the town and fired tear gas canisters and stun grenades toward the town residents who attempted to reach their farmland before a bulldozer razed three agricultural rooms, reducing them to rubble.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces ordered the demolition of three houses in al-Juwaya community in Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank district of Hebron.

Coordinator of the Protection and Resilience Committees, Fouad al-Amour, told WAFA that Israeli forces stormed the community and handed three residents orders to demolish their homes.

He added that the soldiers also handed a resident of the nearby community of Ein al-Beida a notice to tear down his agricultural room.

Considered as one of the eastern suburbs of Yatta, al-Juwaya is heavily targeted by the Israeli occupation measures intended to obliterate Palestinian construction expansion.

Masafer Yatta is a collection of almost 19 hamlets that rely heavily on animal husbandry as the main source of livelihood.

The Israeli High Court ruled on May 4 in favor of demolishing 12 communities in Masafer Yatta and displacing thousands of their residents under the claim of being present in a firing zone area.

Located in Area C of the West Bank, under full Israeli administrative and military control, the area has been subjected to repeated Israeli violations by settlers and soldiers targeting their main source of living – livestock.

It has been designated as a closed Israeli military zone for training since the 1980s and is accordingly referred to as Firing Zone 918.

Israeli violations against the area include the demolition of animal barns, homes and residential structures. Issuance of construction permits by Israel to local Palestinians in the area is non-existent.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

The international Human Rights Watch (HRW) criticized a ban on Nakba Day demonstrations in Germany describing them as undue interference with rights to free expression and assembly.

“This week, Palestinians and their supporters across the globe marked Nakba Day, commemorating the more than 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes, and the more than 400 Palestinian villages destroyed in the events surrounding the establishment of Israel in 1948,” wrote Omar Shakir, HRW Israel and Palestine Director, Middle East and North Africa Division.

In Berlin, however, police banned several Nakba Day protests planned for May 13-15. When people took to the streets anyway, police responded forcefully, shoving and dragging several demonstrators, and detaining scores for up to two hours, according to witnesses, lawyers, and video footage reviewed by Human Rights Watch. In one clip, an officer tells a woman she is being held because “she shouted ‘Free Palestine’.”

In one of several decisions to ban protests, the police said they assessed an “immediate danger” of “inflammatory, anti-Semitic exclamations,” incitement, and violence. A copy of the full police assessment, obtained by Human Rights Watch, cited prior protests, claiming demonstrators threw bottles and stones, carried pyrotechnics, harassed journalists, used hateful speech, denied “Israel’s right to exist,” and that protest organizers failed to maintain order. The police highlighted the high “emotion” and considerable “mobilization potential” on Nakba Day and amid the context of escalating events in Israel and Palestine. They also noted alleged ties between demonstrations and groups they claim have links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Hamas, Palestinian political movements that are on the European Union’s list of terrorist groups.

Organizers challenged the ban, but a Berlin administrative court and a German appellate court upheld it. Courts also upheld the Berlin police’s decision to ban pro-Palestinian demonstrations that had been planned between April 29 and May 1. The police decisions follow a 2019 Bundestag resolution that wrongfully declared boycotts of Israel inherently anti-Semitic. Meanwhile, the German government too often chooses not to speak out about Israel’s grave human rights abuses against Palestinians.

International human rights law permits restrictions on the rights to free assembly, association, and expression, but restrictions should be necessary and proportionate. A preemptive ban on commemorating an event is an extreme restriction that effectively works as a collective punishment on those who wish to peacefully assemble, based on speculation over potential unlawful acts of a minority, said HRW.

While law enforcement should respond to and punish acts of violence, including incitement to violence and antisemitic acts, police should seek to regulate, not ban, demonstrations. The fact that people express outrage and emotions at demonstrations should not form any part of the basis of any ban, it said.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

Israeli forces today attacked a Palestinian-American female in Hebron’s Old Town, in the southern occupied West Bank, according to WAFA correspondent.

Israeli forces reportedly dragged the female, holding the American nationality, across the ground, verbally insulted her, and forced her out of the Ibrahimi Mosque area.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates said that it had submitted a letter to the International Criminal Court (ICC) regarding the crimes committed by the occupying power, Israel, against the Palestinian people, particularly the ‘crime of execution’ of al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

“As is the case with previous periodic reports, the ministry called on the ICC to adopt this report in order to expedite its investigations and bring criminals and murderers to international justice,” said the ministry in a statement.

Al-Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh, 51, from Jerusalem, was killed on May 11 during an Israeli army assault in the northern West Bank city of Jenin.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

Israeli occupation forces today evening placed various checkpoints across the Jenin area in an attempt to make life difficult for Palestinians there, according to local sources.

Sources told WAFA that forces stormed several neighborhoods and towns in Jenin, setting up military checkpoints at their entrances.

Forces stopped passing Palestinian registered vehicles, searched them, and checked passengers’ identity cards, causing a traffic jam.

Forces further attacked Palestinians crossing through a checkpoint it has placed at the eastern entrance to the town of Yabad.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)