Day: 24 May 2022

Weather today in Palestine is clear and mild during the day and relatively cold during the night with a significant rise in temperature, which becomes around its seasonal average, according to the Palestinian Meteorological Department (PMD).

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

Temperature in the capital, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem is expected to reach a high of 25°C and a low of 15°C, and in Ramallah and Hebron a high of 24°C and a low of 14°C. In Jericho, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan Valley temperature is expected to reach a high of 34°C and a low of 22°C, while it is expected to reach a high of 26°C and a low of 19°C in Gaza and the coastal areas.

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.

Another rise in temperature is expected on Friday, approaching 5°C above the seasonal average.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

An infant was last night seriously hurt when Israeli settlers attacked his parent’s car while driving on a road in the north of the occupied West Bank and spraying the family with pepper gas, according to a local official.

Ghassan Daghlas, an official, said settlers attacked Palestinian commuters on a road linking Jenin and Nablus districts and pepper-spraying one of the cars causing the infant to suffocate.

The infant was rushed to the hospital where he was reported in serious condition.

Settlers, protected by soldiers, regularly attack Palestinian commuters and villages in the occupied territories. Despite the damage and injuries they cause, no one is prosecuted or even arrested while Palestinians who throw stones at Israeli cars are quickly arrested, sometimes even shot, and sentenced to long prison terms.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

Developments at the Ibrahimi mosque in the southern West Bank city of Hebron as well as Israeli obstructions in the investigation of the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh as well as refusing to allow a European Parliament delegation from entering the occupied territories were highlighted on the front page of the three Palestinian Arabic dailies published today.

Al-Ayyam and al-Hayat al-Jadida made the Ibrahimi mosque topic their main front-page story and said that the Israeli occupation started to take down parts of the stairs of the mosque and at the same time attacked a protest march against the Israeli changes in the mosque.

The third daily, al-Quds, said in its main front-page story that as the Palestinian Authority submits the file of the Israeli murder of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh to the International Criminal Court, Israel is obstructing the investigation into her murder and blocked a visit by a European Parliament delegation to Palestine forcing the cancelation of the visit.

The three papers also reported on the Israeli demolitions, detentions, and attacks in the occupied territories that left two people injured.

Al-Quds said the Israeli army claims that 21-year-old Raed al-Sharif has not died from a rubber bullet when Israeli police attacked Palestinian worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque last month but that he died of a heart attack. Sharif died in hospital three weeks after he was critically injured by a rubber bullet that hit him in the head.

It also said that Muslim religious leaders said they do not recognize any Israeli court ruling regarding Al-Aqsa Mosque. It said the Israeli police has appealed against the Magistrate’s Court decision allowing Jews to hold religious rituals inside the Muslim holy place.

It also said that the Israeli security forces are getting ready to safeguard the provocative so-called “flags march” in Jerusalem’s old city planned by extremist Israelis for Sunday.

The paper also reported on a story in the New York Times that said Israel was getting ready to launch the biggest operation to displace Palestinians in decades.

Al-Ayyam daily said Palestinian students at Ben Gurion University in the Naqab have marked Nakba Day with a rally on campus during which Palestinian flags were raised.

It also said, based on a story in the Israeli daily Haaretz, that only one criminal case was opened against the Israeli army in the latest military attack on Gaza.

Al-Hayat al-Jadida said hunger striker Palestinian administrative detainee, Khalil Awawdeh, was quickly taken to hospital following a serious deterioration in his health after 82 days of fast in protest against his detention without charge or trial.

The paper also reported on the meetings of Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh in Davos where he is attending the World Economic Forum.

It said in a report that while Israelis publish incitement posts on social media once every 70 seconds, the Palestinian content is constantly attacked and banned.

It said that graduates at Georgetown University in Washington have raised the Palestinian flag and pictures of Shireen Abu Akleh in the ceremony attended by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken while one graduate even refused to shake his hand in protest against the US blind support for Israel against the Palestinians.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

The European Union is putting Palestinian lives at risk as it continues to delay the disbursement of aid to vital sectors in the occupied Palestinian territory, today said the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in a statement.

A large portion of EU funding committed to Palestine, valued at nearly €215 million, has been delayed since 2021 as the European Union continues to condition the release of the money on specific changes to Palestinian school textbooks. Meanwhile, this aid suspension is crippling critical sectors and services, including healthcare in occupied East Jerusalem, with dire consequences for patients needing treatment at hospitals.

“These restrictions punish terminally ill patients who cannot get life-saving medicine and force children to go hungry when parents cannot afford to buy food. Palestinians are paying the cruelest price for political decisions made in Brussels,” said Jan Egeland, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s secretary-general.

At least 500 cancer patients, diagnosed since September 2021, have been unable to access adequate, life-saving treatments at occupied East Jerusalem’s Augusta Victoria Hospital, resulting in avoidable deaths, according to the Lutheran World Federation, which operates the hospital. Patients already under the care of the hospital have endured significant delays in critical treatment.

The devastating impact of the EU’s decision extends beyond healthcare. Since November 2021, up to 120,000 Palestinians, the majority in Gaza, have not received cash support that is critical for their survival, according to news reports. Salaries of Palestinian Authority employees, including teachers and healthcare workers, have been cut by 20 percent.

Muhammed, 74, from Gaza, has been impacted by the delays in EU aid. He relies on social assistance from the Ministry of Social Development, which is his sole source of income, but has not received support for close to two years. He cares for his wife who is partly paralyzed and is now unable to afford adequate housing. He told NRC, “We do not ask to live like the rest of humanity, just a quarter of the life they live would suffice, no more.”

“The delay because of a political position is putting lives at risk every day. We appeal to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to release the funds immediately so that critical assistance for vulnerable Palestinians and support for basic services can continue,” Egeland added.

An initial proposal to disburse the funds was held up in 2021 after Olivér Várhelyi, the European Commissioner for Neighborhood and Enlargement, pushed to make the financial assistance conditional on changes to the Palestinian curriculum, despite the textbooks overall being in line with UNESCO standards. Fifteen EU member states signed a letter to the European Commission criticizing the delay and calling for the immediate release of the funds.

The EU’s Foreign Affairs Council has requested that the issue be referred to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to stop further delays, but it remains unresolved.

NRC urged EU donors to immediately find a way to resume funding life-saving programs, basic service provision and social safety networks without further conditions.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

Palestinian human rights organizations – Al-Haq, Al-Mezan and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) – today filed a submission to the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the International Criminal Court (ICC) providing a detailed description and analysis of the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the May 2021 Israeli military offensive against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and urged him to open cases from these attacks.

“The May 2021 attack on Gaza is just the most recent example of a series of highly destructive military operations aimed at causing disproportionate damage and suffering on the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, which is subjected to an unlawful 15-year-old closure,” said Raji Sourani, the Director of PCHR.

The operation, codenamed “Operation Guardian of the Walls,” took place in the context of an exceptionally hard wave of repression by the Israeli authorities across occupied Palestine: tensions escalated after Israeli courts ordered the expulsion of Palestinian families from their homes in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, in occupied East Jerusalem, and the transfer of those lands to Israeli settlers.

These events resulted in protests spreading all over the territory of Palestine, which were met by Israel with the intensification of repression and resort to military force and violence. In Jerusalem and within the Green Line this translated into waves of arbitrary arrests, police violence and mobs of Israeli extremists lynching Palestinians while being shielded and supported by the authorities; in the West Bank, it took the form of tightening the occupation regime by the Israeli military and security forces.

The Gaza Strip, meanwhile, was crushed by a full-scale military assault, consisting of 11 days of heavy bombardments which resulted in the killing of 240 and wounding of 1968 Palestinians.

While these events are the context in which the facts must be considered, the analysis provided in the Submission focuses specifically on the international crimes committed in Gaza, in continuity with the previous military attacks on the Gaza Strip and its illegal closure, which is about to mark its 15th year.

The Submission finds that grave crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court have been committed on a wide scale by the Israeli authorities against Palestinian civilians and civil infrastructures of Gaza, including the crimes of willful killing, willfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health, extensive destruction of property, intentional attacks on civilian objects and disproportionate use of force, within a military occupation, thus in the context of and associated with an international armed conflict.

“The commission of these crimes needs to be seen in the context of Israel’s prolonged, belligerent occupation of the entire Palestinian territory, and of the widespread commission of systemic crimes against humanity, including apartheid, and grave war crimes”, affirms Shawan Jabareen, Director of Al-Haq.

As already thoroughly outlined in another submission presented by the organizations to the Court in November 2017, and underlined by various independent high-profile reports (including by UN Committees), the structure of the Israeli investigative system precludes effective independent and impartial investigations, as 79% of the criminal complaints presented to the Israeli Military Advocate General received no substantial response.

“Victims have already waited for too long. How much longer will Palestinians in Gaza need to wait, before the ICC holds Israeli officials to account?”, said Issam Younis, the director-general of Al-Mezan.

The Submission concludes that only a prompt, concrete and comprehensive investigation and the opening of specific cases against individual Israeli defendants by the ICC can end the decades-long impunity for crimes committed against Palestinians, possibly hamper their continuous and current perpetration and contribute to the prevention of further crimes. International law has been violated relentlessly and blatantly by Israeli forces since its occupation of Palestine, in breach of most provisions of conventional and customary international law, prejudicing and obliterating any perspective of a “peace process” leading to a just resolution. An effective prosecution is therefore absolutely warranted, as it constitutes the last resource to restore the respect for and the enforcement of international justice.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

The Israeli occupation forces demolished today a mosque that was still in the construction stage in Arab al-Ramadin area, located behind the apartheid wall near the city of Qalqilya, in the north of the West Bank, and close to the “green line” between Israel and the West Bank.

Israel has informed the people building the mosque to demolish it or it will be demolished by the army.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

The Israeli military today demolished two agricultural rooms in two different villages in Masafer Yatta in what is believed to be another demolition on the road to tear down 12 Masafer Yatta villages and displace over 1000 of their Palestinian residents.

The Israeli High Court on May 4 gave the army the green light to demolish the 12 villages and displace their residents after the army declared the area as a firing zone. Since then, the Israeli military has gradually demolished several homes and rooms in different villages to avoid being criticized if it carries the demolitions at one time.

Palestinian activist Fouad al-Amour told WAFA that the army accompanied heavy machinery broke into al-Tawaneh and al-Jawaya villages where they demolished the two rooms owned by local residents.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

The Palestinian Authority (PA) today called on the US administration to remove the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from its list of terrorist organizations.

“The PA called on the US administration, in an official letter, to remove the PLO from the lists of terrorism, according to the classification of Congress,” said Hussein al-Sheikh, member of the PLO’s Executive Committee.

“We expressed our astonishment and our absolute rejection of the persistence of this unjust classification of a people under occupation at a time when the Kach terrorist organization is removed from those lists.”

The US earlier this week removed the terrorist Israeli Kach movement from the US lists of terrorism. At the same time, the US Congress insisted on keeping the PLO, a liberation movement fighting to free its people and country from more than 50 years of Israeli occupation, on the terrorist lists, prompting the PA to describe this step as a “double standard and the victory of injustice

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

The Israeli occupation authorities today legalized a colonial settlement outpost established on the lands of Dura town, south of Hebron, according to the Anti-Wall and Settlement Committee.

The committee said in a press statement that Israeli Civil Administration’s Supreme Planning Council (SPC) approved a detailed master plan under No. 521/1/B to retroactively legalize the colonial settlement outpost of Mitzpe Lachish (Givat Habooster), annexing it to the nearby settlement of Negohot and allocating 520 donums of land for this purpose.

The master plan paves the way for turning Mitzpe Lachish, established in 2002, into a neighborhood of Negohot and constructing 158 new settler units, turning Negohot into a major colonial bloc over 811 donums of Palestinian land.

The “Civil Administration” is the name Israel gives to the body administering its military occupation of the West Bank.

Soldiers in the oxymoronically named Civil Administration determine where Palestinians may live, where and when they may travel (including to other parts of the occupied territories like Gaza and East Jerusalem), whether they can build or expand homes on their own land, whether they own that land at all, whether an Israeli settler can takeover that land among others.

Over 700,000 Israelis live in Jewish-only colonial settlements across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of international law.

The number of settlers has almost tripled since the Oslo Accords of 1993, when settlers’ number estimated 252,000. Illegal colonial settlements have leapt from 144 to over 515 in that time.

Israel’s nation-state law that passed last July stated that building and strengthening colonial settlements as a “national interest.”

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

Israeli forces today erected watchtowers at the entrances of Khirbet Qalqas neighborhood in the southern Hebron city, according to WAFA correspondent.

He said that Israeli soldiers set up watchtowers at the entrances of the village just a day following the installation of metal gates.

Located 4 kilometers to the south of Salfit city, Khirbet Qalqas has a population of some 3,000 and occupies a total area of 7,000 dunams. Israel controls 96 percent of the neighborhood land, classified as Area C.

Israel has seized at least 1,000 dunams (14 percent) belonging to the village and blocked the road linking the village with the rest of Hebron city since 2000. Ever since, residents have had to cross the settler-only by-pass road Route 60 on foot or travel an alternative route to reach the rest of the city. Six Palestinians have been killed crossing Route 60 in recent years.

Describing life in the neighborhood, which has been turned into a crowded enclave, a ghetto, surrounded by colonial settlements and military installations, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem that “Closing off vehicular access to Route 60 from the neighborhood has primarily harmed weaker segments of the population, such as individuals who need medical care in the city (including some 20 who suffer from kidney failure and cancer), and those who cannot afford the cost of taking the bypass route. That said, the blocked access road keeps all residents of Khirbet Qalqas from leading a normal routine and makes every excursion out of the neighborhood an exhausting and sometimes perilous journey.”

“In one fell swoop, Israel’s actions cut off the neighborhood and its residents from the city on which they heavily rely, making their lives unbearable. Ordinary day-to-day activities have become a matter for considerable deliberation, and many prefer to forgo them in order to avoid the considerable hassle involved. The situation in Khirbet Qalqas is yet another example of what it means to live under occupation, with Israel abusing its power to make decisions that drastically change residents’ lives without so much as consulting them. This reality will continue as long as the occupation continues.”

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)