Day: 1 December 2022

Weather today is mainly clear and relatively cold in the mountains and mild in other districts in daytime with a rise in temperature, which becomes seasonal, according to the Palestinian Meteorological Department (PMD).

Weather tonight is mostly clear and cold. Light to moderate northeasterly northwesterly wind blows in daytime, and northwesterly wind blows in the night. Sea waves are low.

Temperature in the capital, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem is expected to reach a high of 19°C and a low of 12°C and in Ramallah and Hebron a high of 18°C and a low of 11°C. In Jericho, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan Valley temperature is expected to reach a high of 28°C and a low of 17°C, while it is expected to reach a high of 22°C and a low of 17°C in Gaza and the coastal areas.

Friday’s temperature is set to slightly rise with mostly clear and relatively cold conditions in the mountains and mild in other districts in daytime.

Saturday’s temperature is set to slightly drop, paving the way to partly cloudy to cloudy and mild conditions in daytime and cold conditions in the night.

No significant change is expected in temperature on Sunday with partly cloudy to clear and relatively cold conditions in the mountains and mild conditions in other districts in daytime. Cold conditions are expected in the evening and night hours.

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency

Israeli forces predawn Thursday detained 10 Palestinians from various parts of the occupied West Bank, according to local and security sources.

They said that Israeli forces re-arrested a former prisoner and ransacked his family house in Kobar town, north of the city of Ramallah.

Meanwhile, heavily-armed police rounded two others from Jerusalem; one from Issawiyeh neighborhood and the other from Silwan neighborhood.

Earlier, hostile armed police barged their way into the East Jerusalem neighborhood of At-Tur, and blatantly harassed residents, triggering confrontations.

During the confrontations, police fired volleys of stun grenades and tear gas canisters at local youths. No injuries were reported though.

In the southern West Bank, a convoy of army vehicles stormed Dura city, south of Hebron, where the soldiers detained three others.

They also conducted a similar raid in Deir Samet village, southwest of the city, resulting in the detention of another.

In the northern West Bank, the soldiers showed up at a house in Beit Furik town, east of Nablus, muscled inside, conducted a thorough search and eventually re-arrested a former prisoner.

They also sabotaged a bus parked nearby that the former prisoner uses to transport children to a local kindergarten.

The sources confirmed a raid in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, resulting in the detention of two others.

Israeli forces frequently raid Palestinian houses almost on a daily basis across the West Bank on the pretext of searching for “wanted” Palestinians, triggering clashes with residents.

These raids, which take place also in areas under the full control of the Palestinian Authority, are conducted with no need for a search warrant, whenever and wherever the military chooses in keeping with its sweeping arbitrary powers.

Under Israeli military law army commanders have full executive, legislative and judicial authority over 3 million Palestinians living in the West Bank. Palestinians have no say in how this authority is exercised.

According to the latest figures from Addameer, the Palestinian Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, there are currently 4,700 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons and detention centers, including 190 children and 30 female prisoners.

This number includes approximately 800 Palestinians placed under “administrative detention”, that allows the detention of Palestinians without charge or trial for renewable intervals ranging between three and six months based on undisclosed evidence that even a detainee’s lawyer is barred from viewing.

Mass arrest of Palestinians is nothing new. According to a 2017 report by Addameer, over the past 50 years, more than 800,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned or detained by Israel, this figure is now believed to be closer to 1 million. This means that about 40% of Palestinian men and boys living under military occupation have been deprived of their freedom. Almost every Palestinian family has suffered the imprisonment of a loved one.

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency

Israeli forces Thursday morning stormed a school in Tuqu‘ town, south of Bethlehem city, according to a local source.

The town mayor, Tayseer Abu Mefreh, said that the gun-toting soldiers surrounded the school campus, close to the northern entrance of the southern West Bank town, from al, directions before storming it.

Bassam Jaber, an official from the Education Ministry, said that the soldiers briefly held the school principal and the teachers.

In late September, a seven-year-old Palestinian boy died after falling from a significant height while running away from Israeli soldiers in the town.

Rayyan Yaser Suleiman was coming home from school with other pupils in the town when troops gave chase, and he died on the spot from fear, his father Yasser said.

A medical official who inspected the boy’s body told Reuters that it bore no sign of physical trauma and that the death appeared consistent with heart failure.

Attacks on education by Israeli military forces and Israeli settlers in the Palestine constitute grave violations of children’s rights to education and development. These attacks are particularly prevalent in the most vulnerable areas of the West Bank – Area C, H2 and Jerusalem.

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency

Israeli occupation forces today demolished two commercial structures in Qalandiya village, northwest of Jerusalem, according to a local official.

The village mayor, Walid Keishi, said that the heavily-armed soldiers escorted a bulldozer to the village, where the heavy machinery tore down a 100-square-meter car wash belonging to Muhammad Nafe‘ and a 200-square-meter structures belonging to Samer Abu Zeinheh.

Israel demolishes Palestinian houses and structures almost on a daily basis as a means to achieve “demographic control” of the occupied territories.

Israel denies planning permits for Palestinians to build on their own land or to extend existing houses to accommodate natural growth, particularly in Jerusalem and Area C, which constitutes 60 percent of the occupied West Bank and falls under full Israeli military rule, forcing residents to build without obtaining rarely-granted permits to provide shelters for their families.

In contrast, Israel argues that building within existing colonial settlements is necessary to accommodate the “natural growth” of settlers. Therefore, it much more easily gives the over 700,000 Jewish Israeli settlers there building permits and provides them with roads, electricity, water and sewage systems that remain inaccessible to many neighboring Palestinians.

Soldiers in the oxymoronically named Civil Administration, the name Israel gives to the body administering its military occupation of the West Bank, 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.

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency

Israeli army today sealed off the northern entrance to Tuqu‘ town, south of Bethlehem, according to a local source.

The town mayor, Tayseer Abu Mefreh, said that the soldiers closed the metal gate at the town entrance after they stormed a nearby school campus.

He added that the soldiers set up a checkpoint at the western entrance of the town, stopping villagers on their way out and into the town and inspecting their identity cards.

Israel severely restricts Palestinians’ freedom of movement through a complex combination of approximately 100 fixed checkpoints, flying checkpoints, settler-only roads and various other physical obstructions.

Closures besides to other measures, taken under the guise of security, are intended to entrench Israel’s 55-year-old military occupation of the West Bank and its settler colonial project which it enforces with routine and frequently deadly violence against Palestinians.

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency

The Palestinian Prisoner Society (PPS) today condemned an Israeli decision to deport Palestinian French human rights defender and resident of occupied East Jerusalem, Salah Hammouri, 37, after revoking his Jerusalem residency rights.

PPS director Qaddoura Faris described in a statement the sudden decision to deport Hammouri to France and to revoke his Jerusalem residency as a crime.

“The occupation regime and its various organs were not satisfied with the crimes committed against Hammouri over many years, but added to them an additional crime to uproot Hammouri from his homeland, his family, and his society, in an attempt to undermine his human rights and national role,” said Faris.

Hammouri, who is currently held in administrative detention since the beginning of March, has spent nine years in Israeli occupation prisons as a result of over six arrests with the longest stretch he spent in Israeli detention being seven continuous years between 2005 and 2011 after he was forced to choose between being deported to France for 15 years or imprisoned for seven.

In October 2021, Israel issued a decision to revoke his Jerusalem residency for charges of not showing loyalty to the State of Israel, which was based on ‘secret evidence.’ His French wife and children currently reside in France because the occupation authorities have prevented them from returning to live in Jerusalem, thus depriving the family of living together in the father’s homeland.

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency

Israeli occupation troops today obstructed students’ access to their school in Deir Samet village, west of the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, according to WAFA correspondent.

He said that the gun-toting soldiers fired volleys of tear gas canisters in the vicinity of Akka Elementary Co-ed School and intercepted students and teachers on their way to the school after an army vehicle overturned in a nearby area.

Yasser Saleh, an Education Ministry official, said the teachers managed to secure the students’ access to the school while confirming that none was injured.

Attacks on education by Israeli military forces and Israeli settlers in the Palestine constitute grave violations of children’s rights to education and development. These attacks are particularly prevalent in the most vulnerable areas of the West Bank – Area C, H2 and Jerusalem.

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency

Palestine, exhausted by the Israeli occupation, did not succeed in finding long-term solutions to the crisis of water scarcity that kept the daily per capita consumption of water for the Palestinians less than the internationally recommended rate and it is still decreasing, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) and the Water Authority.

The water crisis afflicting the world due to climate change, rising temperatures, and the decline in freshwater levels is augmented by the Israeli occupation, which is perching on Palestinian land, stealing its groundwater, and preventing Palestinians from benefiting from their natural resources, while preventing any solutions to it.

The average Palestinian per capita consumption of water is 84.2 liters per day, 82.4 liters per capita per day in the West Bank, and 86.6 liters in the Gaza Strip, while different governorates consume different rates per capita, per day estimated at 100 liters per day according to the standards of the World Health Organization. Meanwhile, Israeli consumption is estimated to be six times that of the Palestinian, due to the theft of Palestinian water resources.

The crisis is not limited to water scarcity, but also to the high rate of its pollution. In the Gaza Strip, the per capita share of water suitable for human use reaches 26.8 liters per day, with 201.8 million cubic meters of water available to Palestinians is unfit for human use, compared to 246.6 million cubic meters suitable for human use, which includes purchased and desalinated water.

According to the PCBS, more than 97% of the water that is pumped from the coastal basin does not comply with the standards of the World Health Organization.

The report shows that the amount of water extracted from the coastal basin in the Gaza Strip amounted to 190.5 million cubic meters during the year 2020, while it should not exceed 50-60 million cubic meters per year. The excessive extraction of the underground water led to a decrease in the water reservoir to less than 19 meters under sea level and to the entry of seawater and sewage into the reservoir, which made more than 97% of the coastal basin water not compatible with WHO standards.

The political situation poses an important challenge that prevents the development of an integrated Palestinian water system at the national level, as Israel controls more than 85% of the Palestinian water resources.

Palestine depends mainly on water extracted from ground and surface sources, which accounts for 79% of the total available water, while 108.8 million cubic meters are extracted for underground water (the eastern, western, and northeastern basins) in the West Bank, while the Israeli occupation has prevented the Palestinians from accessing the Jordan River water since 1967, which is estimated at about 250 million cubic meters.

The report indicated that the Israeli measures that prevent the Palestinians from exploiting their natural resources, especially water, forced them to compensate for the shortfall by purchasing water from the Israeli water company Mekorot, as the amount of water purchased for domestic use reached 90.3 million cubic meters in 2020, which constitutes 20% of the total water available out of the amount of available of 448.4 million cubic meters, of which 53.3 million cubic meters flowed from Palestinian springs, 299.1 million cubic meters flowed from underground basins, and 5.7 million cubic meters of desalinated drinking water, which constitutes 1% of the available water.

In its efforts to stop the illegal Israeli exploitation of Palestinian resources, and in refusing to keep Palestinian water under Israeli occupation and control, President Mahmoud Abbas, said: “We will go to the competent international parties to stop the occupation’s aggression against our waters.”

He affirmed in a speech before the Fourth Arab Water Conference, held in the Arab League under the slogan “Arab Water Security for Life, Development and Peace”, delivered on his behalf by a member of the PLO Executive Committee and Deputy Prime Minister Ziad Abu Amr, that the Dead Sea constitutes another example of the assault on Palestinian waters, as it shrinks year after year due to the diversion or withholding of the river waters, and the absence of agreement on allocation and management of the shares in accordance with international law.

For his part, Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said that the Israeli occupation authorities steal 600 million cubic meters of Palestinian groundwater, which amounts to about 800 million cubic meters, and divert it into its cities and settlements, noting that the Dead Sea is going to be totally dry until 2044 because of the Israeli measures against it.

Shtayyeh told the Fourth Arab Water Conference that a third of the West Bank water is used in Israel, and when the Israeli consumes 430 liters of water per day, the Palestinian individual consumes only 72 liters, which is less than the global average of 120 liters per day.

“We are fighting for our water rights, and the Dead Sea is threatened with death and complete drought until 2044 because of the Israeli measures against it from diverting its water resources and depleting its capabilities, including minerals and salts extracted by Israeli companies.”

The Prime Minister said that after 1967, Israel began digging water wells in the West Bank deeper than the Palestinian wells, which led to its control of most of the groundwater, and led to the drying up of springs such as Ain Al-Auja, adding: This theft affected the transformation of the agricultural pattern in Palestine, as the area of irrigated land decreased from 6% to about 2% of the cultivated land, and farmers shifted from cultivating citrus and bananas to cultivations that require less water, such as strawberries and others.

The head of the Water Authority, Mazen Ghuneim, said the Israeli occupation is exploiting water to undermine the chances of establishing a fully sovereign Palestinian state, through its illegal expansionist plans, and its obstruction of all efforts to develop the water sector in all its components. This exacerbates the suffering of the Palestinian people, which is considered a flagrant violation of the relevant international laws, treaties and agreements.

He pointed out that the occupation continues to plunder ground and surface water resources in the occupied Syrian Golan and southern Lebanon, and its ambitions in Arab water, in general, are increasing, while it controls more than 85% of the water resources in Palestine, which made Palestine face a difficult water situation, reminding that water is one of the five files in the final status negotiations with Israel.

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency

The Israeli occupation forces today notified Palestinian residents of a community in Masafer Yatta, in the south of the West Bank, to cease work in two houses and an agricultural structure.

Masafer Yatta activist Fouad al-Imour told WAFA that the occupation forces broke into Umm Lasfa community and handed the stop work order for a 260-square-meter house owned by a local resident, and another 180-square-meter house and an 80-square-meter agricultural shack owned by another.

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency