Day: 9 September 2022

GAZA, Friday, September 09, 2022 (WAFA) – Israeli forces Friday overnight detained six Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, according to WAFA correspondent.

He said that Israeli soldiers stationed at Gaza’s eastern frontier rounded up two Palestinians to the southeast of Khan Younes governorate.

Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers showed up at a house in Silwad town, east of the West Bank city of Ramallah, muscled inside and detained another.

They also detained three others in multiple raids across the southern West Bank district of Bethlehem.

One was identified as a resident of Husan town, west of Bethlehem, another as a resident of Dheisha refugee camp, south of the city, and the other as a resident of al-Azzeh refugee camp.

Source: Palestine News & Information Agency

GAZA, Friday, September 09, 2022 (WAFA) – Israeli troops Friday morning attacked cattle herders east of Khan Younes city in the southern besieged Gaza Strip, according to WAFA correspondent.

He said that Israeli soldiers stationed at Gaza’s eastern frontier fired an intensive barrage of tear gas canisters towards livestock herders in Abasan al-Jadida area, east of the city, forcing them to flee.

Two million Palestinians live the Gaza Strip, which has been subjected to a punishing and crippling Israeli blockade for 12 years and repeated onslaughts that have heavily damaged much of the enclave’s infrastructure.

Gaza’s 2-million population remains under “remote control” occupation and a strict siege, which has destroyed the local economy, strangled Palestinian livelihoods, plunged them into unprecedented rates of unemployment and poverty, and cut off from the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories and the wider world.

Gaza remains occupied territory, having no control over its borders, territorial waters or airspace. Meanwhile, Israel upholds very few of its responsibilities as the occupying power, failing to provide for the basic needs of Palestinian civilians living in the territory.

Every two in three Palestinians in Gaza is a refugee from lands inside what is now Israel. That government forbids them from exercising their right to return as enshrined in international law because they are not Jews.

Source: Palestine News & Information Agency

QALQILIA– At least six Palestinians were lightly injured by Israeli occupation forces today during the weekly anti-occupation protests in the village of Kafr Qaddum, in the West Bank province of Qalqilia, and in the villages of Beita and Beit Dajan in Nablus province, according to local sources.

Morad Shtewi, a local anti-occupation activist based in the village of Kafr Qaddum, told WAFA that Israeli soldiers attacked anti-occupation protesters with rubber-coated rounds and tear gas canisters, injuring 4 of them by rubber-coated rounds and causing many cases of suffocation from gas inhalation.

All of the injured protesters were treated at the scene of the clashes.

Shtewi said the march was held in protest of Israel’s medical negligence of prisoner Nasser Abu Hmeid, a Palestinian prisoner and cancer patient serving a life sentence in Israeli prisons and who’s said to be battling death.

Meantime, two Palestinian civilians were injured by Israeli rubber-coated rounds during the weekly protest against Israeli settlements, which took place in the village of Beit Dajan in the West Bank province of Nablus.

A similar protest also took place in the village of Beita, nearby, where cases of suffocation from teargas inhalation among Palestinian protesters were reported.

For many years, villagers from Kafr Qaddum and neighboring villages have been protesting every Friday against illegal Israeli settlement construction.

More than 600,000 Israelis live in Jewish-only settlements across the occupied Palestinian Territories in violation of international law.

Source: Palestine News & Information Agency

WASHINGTON, Friday, September 09, 2022 (WAFA) – Google and Amazon workers Thursday afternoon protested their employers’ recent billion-dollar contract with Israel.

Scores of Google and Amazon employees organized protests in New York, Seattle, San Francisco, and Durham, including the tech giants’ headquarters, calling for their employers to cancel their contract with the Israeli military known as “Project Nimbus”.

Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud executives have signed a lucrative $1.22-billion-dollar contract with the Israeli government to supply the government ministries and the military with artificial intelligence and cloud storage facilities.

The protests were organized as part of a national day of action led by the No Tech for Apartheid campaign.

Former Google worker Ariel Koren spoke and talked about how Google retaliated against her for opposing Project Nimbus, which provides artificial intelligence services and extensive monitoring programs to the Israeli occupation army.

Participants made it clear that the Project Nimbus would strengthen the policies and mechanisms of apartheid and suppression of the Palestinian people.

Al-Jazeera pointed that the impact of the “No Technology Apartheid” initiative, organized by technologists and programmers against Google and Amazon, is growing, as it now includes nearly 42,000 American citizens who have signed its petition calling on Google and Amazon to “stop dealing with the Israeli apartheid regime and withdraw from the Nimbus project”.

It added that the petition warns that the two American tech giants’ cooperation “with Israeli apartheid is part of a larger pattern of big tech companies that are fueling (…) violence around the world,” and adds that while “the Israeli army has bombed homes, clinics and schools in Gaza and has threatened to expel Palestinian families from their homes in Jerusalem in May 2021,” the two American tech giants signed the controversial deal with Tel Aviv.

Source: Palestine News & Information Agency

JERUSALEM– Israeli occupation authorities forced today a Palestinian family in the occupied Jerusalem neighborhood of al-Isawiya to self-demolish an animal barn of its own, citing unpermitted construction as a pretext.

Local sources told WAFA that the Darwish family in al- Isawiya were forced to demolish a barn of their own to avoid paying exorbitant fees if the Israeli municipality crews carried out the demolition on its own.

Using the pretext of building without a permit, which is rarely granted to Palestinians in the occupied city, the Israeli municipality frequently demolishes or forces Palestinians to demolish their own homes as part of a policy aimed to restrict Palestinian expansion in occupied Jerusalem.

At the same time, the municipality and government build tens of thousands of housing units in illegal settlements in East Jerusalem for Israeli settlers with the goal to offset the demographic balance in favor of the settler population of the occupied city.

Although Palestinians in East Jerusalem, a part of the internationally recognized Palestinian Territory that has been subject to Israeli military occupation since 1967, they are denied their citizenship rights and are instead classified only as “residents” whose permits can be revoked if they move away from the city for more than a few years.

They are also discriminated against in all aspects of life including housing, employment and services, and are unable to access services in the West Bank due to the construction of Israel’s separation wall.

Source: Palestine News & Information Agency

JERUSALEM– Israeli occupation forces today assaulted scores of Palestinian protesters who demonstrated at an Israeli military checkpoint near the village of Al-Jib, north of occupied Jerusalem, against Israel’s ongoing displacement of Palestinians in the neighboring village of Nabi Samuil.

Soldiers assaulted the protesters with teargas and pepper gas canisters, causing suffocation cases among the protesters. Mo’ayyad Sha’ban, the Head of the PLO Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission, was among the protesters who suffocated as a result of the Israeli teargas.

The Israeli occupation forces prevented the provision of first aid to the wounded at the checkpoint, and forced them to leave the area.

Dozens of Palestinians had performed Friday prayers near the occupation checkpoint at the entrance to the village, before they started a nonviolent demonstration towards the checkpoint in support of the people of the besieged village of Nabi Samuil.

The participants waved Palestinian flags and banners decrying the ethnic cleansing of Nabi Samuil village by the Israeli occupation authorities, calling for an end of Israel’s siege of the village.

Nabi Samuil, also written as an-Nabi Samwil, overlooks occupied Jerusalem on one side and Ramallah on the other. With approximately 300 Palestinian inhabitants, the village is located in the “seam zone” — an area separated from the rest of the occupied West Bank by Israel’s apartheid wall.

The residents of Nabi Samwil are flanked by colonial settlements, the Israeli segregation barrier and an Israeli park that is encroaching onto their land.

The national park comprises an archaeological site, which includes the tomb of the Prophet Samuel, an important religious figure for Christians, Jews and Muslims alike. The tomb is surmounted by a mosque which Palestinians can only access on Fridays. It can be closed at any moment to let Israeli settlers access the tomb.

The inhabitants are considered West Bank residents and even though they are on Jerusalem’s side of the wall, they are only allowed to go to the nearest West Bank city, Ramallah, for necessary activities such as buying food or accessing medical care.

Required to submit to a tight regime of permits, everything in their lives is monitored: from the quantity of groceries they bring to the village to the people visiting. Each and every movement of people or products is being controlled by an Israeli “liaison office.”

Source: Palestine News & Information Agency

JENIN– Hardcore Israeli settlers today attacked public and private Palestinian property as well as parked vehicles in the town of Ya’bad, west of Jenin in the north of the occupied West Bank, according to local sources.

Witnesses told WAFA that a group of extremist Israeli settlers backed by army attacked structures and smashed the windshields of at least one vehicle on the outskirts of the town.

Attacks by Israeli settlers on vulnerable Palestinian communities across the occupied West Bank are commonplace, but have seen a noticeable increase over the past week, with injuries among Palestinian citizens reported in multiple areas.

Source: Palestine News & Information Agency

RAMALLAH– Several Palestinian civilians were injured today, some of them by live bullets, in an attack by army-backed Israeli settlers on the village of Sinjil, to the north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, according to local sources.

Mohammad Ghafri, a local Palestinian journalist, told WAFA that a group of Israeli settlers backed by army attacked Palestinians who were present in their own lands that are threatened with Israeli confiscation, adding that the settlers vandalized six Palestinian-owned vehicles during the attack.

Ghafri pointed out that the Israeli soldiers accompanying the settlers in their attack opened live gunfire and rubber-coated rounds at the Palestinian villagers, injuring two Palestinian young men by live shots in the hand and foot, and injuring many others by rubber-coated rounds. Another three Palestinians also suffered bruises after being beaten up by soldiers.

At least one Palestinian was arrested by Israeli soldiers during the attack.

Last week, Israeli bulldozers broke into the area and razed nearly six dunums of Palestinian land for the purpose of opening a settler-only road linking a number of nearby Israeli settlements.

Ever since, Palestinian villagers have intensified their presence in their own lands there and removed structures built recently there by Israeli settlers, but have been attacked several times by Israeli settlers and army.

Only yesterday, six Palestinian civilians sustained injuries, one of them by gunfire, in an attack by Israeli settlers on the village, according to local sources.

Witnesses told WAFA that a group of around 20 Israeli settlers, masked and armed with rifles and backed by army, opened gunfire at Palestinian farmers and physically assaulted many of them while they were planting olive saplings in their own lands near the village.

Source: Palestine News & Information Agency