Day: 30 September 2022

Weather today is hot to very hot in daytime and mild in the mountains and relatively warm in other districts in daytime with a rise in temperature, which approaches 5°C above the seasonal average, according to the Palestinian Meteorological Department (PMD).

Light to moderate northwesterly wind blows. Sea waves are low.

Temperature in the capital, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem is expected to reach a high of 33°C and a low of 21°C and in Ramallah and Hebron a high of 32°C and a low of 20°C. In Jericho, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan Valley temperature is expected to reach a high of 43°C and a low of 28°C, while it is expected to reach a high of 32°C and a low of 24°C in Gaza and the coastal areas.

Saturday’s temperature is set to slightly drop, yet the unseasonably hot to very hot conditions in daytime and relatively warm conditions in nighttime continue.

An additional slight drop in temperature is expected on Sunday, approaching 2°C above the seasonal average and causing a slight relief in the heat stress.

No significant change is expected in the weather conditions on Monday.

PMD warns people against being directly exposed to the sun for long period, particularly from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM, and setting fire to dry grassy areas.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

Israeli forces Friday overnight detained seven Palestinians and wounded two others in various parts of the West Bank, according to local and security sources.

They said that Israeli forces showed up at a house in Jalazone refugee camp, north of Ramallah, muscled inside, conducted a thorough search and eventually rounded up a 17-year-old teen.

The soldiers opened live fire at a vehicle in the refugee camp, wounding two passengers; one in the shoulder and the other in the foot.

The casualties were rushed to a hospital for treatment.

Meanwhile, the gun-toting soldiers detained four Palestinians and ransacked the houses of their families in several neighborhoods of the southern West Bank city of Hebron.

They also barged their way into Beit Ummar town, north of the city, rounded up two others and searched the houses of their families, turning them upside down.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

Americans for Peace Now Thursday urged the US Administration to ensure that joint research initiatives with Israel do not extend to West Bank colonial settlements.

While APN “cautiously” welcomed in a press statement launching the Joint US-Israel Strategic High-Level Dialogue on Technology, it called the US administration to ensure that research initiative is not extended to the colonial settlements.

“We urge the Biden administration to ensure that this partnership is not extended to institutions or companies based in Israeli West Bank Settlements. The West Bank is under Israeli military occupation. It is not a part of sovereign Israel and should not be treated as such,” the statement read.

APN voiced its concerns over the Biden Administration’s failure to restore geographical restrictions in scientific cooperation agreements, so as not to include institutions in West Bank colonial settlements.

In late October 2020, former US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel amended a series of scientific cooperation agreements on Wednesday to include Israeli institutions in the West Bank.

Official from both sides at the time signed protocols amending the Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation, the Binational Science Foundation, and Binational Agricultural Research and Development Foundation at a ceremony in the colonial settlement of Ariel.

“Additionally, we are deeply concerned that the Biden administration has allowed for the Trump administrations’ 2020 removal of the geographic restrictions on other cooperative efforts like the Binational Research Foundations between the US and Israel (BIRD, BARD and BSF) to remain in effect,” APN added.

“While the US and Israel work to strengthen their technological cooperation and research ties, doing so in any context that lends legitimacy to Israeli settlements further entrenches the occupation and undermines prospects for peace. It is vital that the Biden administration restores the territorial restrictions to the Binational Research Foundations and upholds this distinction in any future technology initiatives.”

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

Israeli settlers today stormed Khirbet Makhoul village in the northern Jordan Valley, according to local sources.

Burhan Bsharat, a villager, said that some 20 settlers from the nearby colonial settlement outpost broke into the village, intimidated and ordered the villagers to leave their lands to make room for colonial settlement expansion.

He added that the villagers were concerned about settlers would commit serious attacks, particularly that they have been storming the village during nighttime.

This came after the villagers held a sit-in protesting frequent settler attack, facilitated under military protection.

As part of their attacks against the village, settlers have frequently expelled shepherds from nearby pastures.

Under international law, driving residents of an occupied territory from their homes is considered forcible transfer of protected persons, which constitutes a war crime. But residents of Palestinian communities in the Jordan Valley are no strangers to such disruptive Israeli policies.

The valley, which is a fertile strip of land running west along the Jordan River, is home to about 65,000 Palestinians and makes up approximately 30% of the West Bank.

Since 1967, when the Israeli army occupied the West Bank, Israel has transferred at least 11,000 of its Jewish citizens to the Jordan Valley. Some of the settlements in which they live were built almost entirely on private Palestinian land.

The Israel military has also designated about 46 percent of the Jordan Valley as a closed military zone since the beginning of the occupation in June 1967, and has been utilizing the pretext of military drills to forcefully displace Palestinian families living there as part of a policy of ethnic cleansing and stifling Palestinian development in the area.

Approximately 6,200 Palestinians live in 38 communities in places earmarked for military use and have had to obtain permission from the Israeli authorities to enter and live in their communities.

In violation of international law, the Israeli military not only temporarily displaces the communities on a regular basis, but also confiscates their farmlands, demolishes their homes and infrastructure from time to time.

Besides undergoing temporary displacement, the Palestinian families living there face a myriad restrictions on access to resources and services. Meanwhile, Israel exploits the resources of the area and generates profit by allocating generous tracts of land and water resources for the benefit of settlers.

Israeli politicians have made it clear on several occasions that the highly strategic Jordan Valley would remain under their control in any eventuality.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

Israeli troops today seized an electric generator and construction material from Palestinians close to al-Juwaya community in the southern West Bank district of Hebron, according to a local activist.

Fuad al-Amour said that the gun-toting soldiers confiscated an electric generator and construction material belonging to Mamdouh Da‘ajneh close to the community, east of Masafer Yatta.

The community has been a frequent target of army and settler attacks, including assaulting herders and denying them access to their pastures at gun point, grazing their cattle on Palestinian cultivated land, house demolitions, and seizing gardening tools.

Recently, Israel’s top court gave the army the green light to forcibly expel some 1,300 Palestinians living in twelve villages or hamlets making up the Masafer Yatta area, which relies heavily on animal husbandry as the main source of livelihood, marking one of the largest expulsions carried out by the State of Israel in recent decades.

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 1980s and accordingly referred to as Firing Zone 918.

Israeli violations against the area include 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)

Israeli forces today cracked down on an anti-land-pillage protest in Beit Dajan town, east of Nablus, according medical sources.

Israeli forces used fatal violence to disperse a rally to defend Palestinian-owned land threatened with confiscation, east of the town, opening fire towards the participants.

The Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS) medics confirmed that the gun-toting soldiers intensively used tear gas canisters to disperse the participants, hitting one by a bomb in the hand, another by a bomb in the foot and causing others to suffocate.

Palestinians across in the territories occupied since 1967 and the rest of Historic Palestine have been rising up against decades of Israeli settler- colonialism and apartheid. The villagers of Beit Dajan have not only been protesting decades of Israeli oppression, but also intensified Israeli land pillage of their land.

Israeli forces have erected colonial settlement outpost atop Mount Al-Arma, north of Beita as the mount enjoys a strategic location as they overlook the Jordan Valley, a fertile strip of land running west along the Jordan River which makes up approximately 30% of the West Bank.

Seizing the two hilltops represents a panoptical defensive tool as they would grant the Israeli occupation with a panoramic view over the Jordan Valley and the whole district of Nablus. This is why the Israeli occupation authorities have assigned them a place in its settlement expansion project.

The construction of the two colonial outposts atop Mount Sabih, south of Beita, and Mount Al-Arma, north of the town, besides to a bypass road to the west is an Israeli measure to push Palestinian villages and towns into crowded enclaves, ghettos, surrounded by walls, settlements and military installations, and disrupt their geographic contiguity with other parts of the West Bank.

The number of settlers living in Jewish-only colonial settlements across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of international law has jumped to over 700,000 and colonial settlement expansion has tripled since the signing of Oslo Accords in 1993.

Israel’s nation-state law, passed in July 2018, enshrines Jewish supremacy, and states that building and strengthening the colonial settlements is a “national interest.”

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

Israeli settlers today chopped olive trees belonging to the villagers of Bruqin town, west of Salfit, according to a local sources.

Hakam Abdul-Rahman, a farmer from the town, said that a group of settlers sneaked their way into his olive grove in Ash-Shayyab area, north of the town, and cut some 10 olive trees.

The vandals came from the nearby colonial settlement of Brukhin.

The village has been a frequent target of settler and military attacks, including setting fire to olive groves and villagers houses, razing cultivated land and attacking villagers on picnic, with the ultimate purpose of displacing them and taking over their land to make room for colonial settlement construction.

Settler violence against Palestinians and their property is routine in the West Bank and is rarely prosecuted by Israeli authorities.

Settler violence includes property and mosque arsons, stone-throwing, uprooting of crops and olive trees, attacks on vulnerable homes, among others.

There are over 700,000 Israeli settlers living in colonial settlements across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of international law.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)

Seven Palestinians today sustained gunshot injuries as Israeli forces quelled an anti-colonial-settlement rally in Kafr Qaddum town, east of Qalqiliya, according to a local activist.

Hundreds participated in the weekly rally against colonial settlement expansion and Wednesday’s large-scale raid that resulted in the killing of four Palestinians and injuring dozens others in Jenin refugee camp.

Morad Shtewi, a local activist, told WAFA that Israeli soldiers attacked the protestors with rubber-coated steel bullets, wounding five.

He added that two others sustained injuries due to falling after being chased by the soldiers.

All the casualties were treated at the scene.

There are over 700,000 Israeli settlers living in colonial settlements across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of international law.

Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA)