Day: 17 January 2023

Partially cloudy to cloudy and cold conditions are expected for today in Palestine with a slight rise in temperature, according to the Palestinian Meteorological Department (PMD).

Winds are southwesterly to southeasterly, light to moderate, and sea waves are low.

Temperature in the capital, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem is expected to reach a high of 13°C and a low of 7°C, and in Ramallah and Hebron a high of 12°C and a low of 6°C are expected. In Jericho, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan Valley temperature is expected to reach a high of 21°C and a low of 13°C, while it is expected to reach a high of 19°C and a low of 12°C in Gaza and the coastal areas.

Temperature is expected to rise again tomorrow, Wednesday, and again on Thursday to become three degrees Celsius above the average, and remains the same on Friday, said the PMD.

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency

Israeli occupation forces today detained at least 20 Palestinians from several areas in the occupied territories, including nine from Fawwar refugee camp, south of the southern West Bank city of Hebron, among them a 65-year-old man, local sources confirmed.

A tenth person was detained in Hebron city itself, said the sources.

The soldiers also detained four from the town of Qabatiya, in the Jenin district in the north of the West Bank, two from the town of Silwad, near Ramallah, and three from different places in the Bethlehem district.

Occupation forces also detained a 15-year-old child from East Jerusalem.

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency

The Israeli army killing of 14-year-old Amro Lutfi Khmour in Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem was highlighted on the front page of the three Palestinian Arabic dailies published today.

Al-Ayyam daily described the killing of Khmour as “execution”, while al-Quds daily said he is the third to be killed in the camp by Israeli soldiers in 40 days.

The third daily, al-Hayat al-Jadida, said that in addition to the killing of Khmour, the Israeli occupation forces injured and arrested others throughout the West Bank and demolished commercial structures at the entrance to the town of Hizma, east of Jerusalem, and a residential room in Beit Hanina neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem.

Al-Ayyam and al-Quds also reported on the demolitions in Hizma and said it included 15 commercial structures. They also reported on the confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers in the West Bank, while al-Hayat al-Jadida said soldiers detained an Italian solidarity activist in Dheisheh camp.

Al-Ayyam said settlers attacked Palestinian vehicles driving on West Bank roads near Hawwara and al-Mughyer, north of Ramallah.

Al-Quds reported on the videotape made public yesterday by Hamas of its Israeli captive who asked his Israeli government for how long he is going to remain in captivity and said that the Israeli government considered the tape a hoax.

It also said Israel is getting ready to prevent celebrations for the release of freedom fighter Maher Younis, from the Israeli-Arab town of Ara, after spending 40 years in prison. He is expected to be released in two days.

Al-Hayat al-Jadida said President Mahmoud Abbas arrived in Cairo yesterday to take part in a trilateral summit with the Egyptian and Jordanian leaders.

It said Fatah freedom fighters in Israeli jails have declared full alert in the prisons to face Israeli measures against them.

Al-Ayyam said Member States of the United Nations have rejected Israeli punitive measures against the Palestinian people, leadership and civil society.

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency

A total of 116 human rights and civil society organizations, academic institutions, and groups have endorsed a joint statement condemning Israel’s targeted smear campaign against respected United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territory Occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese.

Israel’s mission to the United Nations in Geneva last month smeared Albanese in a direct attempt to attack and undermine the mandate she has been entrusted with and thwart her expert human rights work on Palestine with baseless accusations of antisemitism, which raises concerns about the “impunity that exists today regarding antisemitism and antisemitic comments made by UN officials,” said the organizations.

“Our organizations and groups warn, that this smear campaign against UNSR Albanese constitutes the latest manifestation in a pattern of Israeli attacks aimed at silencing any legitimate criticism of the inhuman manner in which it treats Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT),” they said.

Previously, Israel objected to the appointment of Francesca Albanese as UN Rapporteur, arguing that she “harbors significant bias against the Jewish State”, a reference directed to her widely acclaimed joint academic treatise on “Palestinian Refugees in International Law”, published by the prestigious, Oxford University Press. Such attempts to undermine the expertise of the UN Special Rapporteur to discredit the mandate are of particular concern given the importance of its functions: protecting at-risk communities, promoting transparency and calling for accountability of the perpetrators of rights abuses.

Notably, Israel has a demonstrated record of circumventing UN work in Palestine, including systematic non-cooperation with UN Special Procedures, in violation of its obligations under the UN Charter. Former UN Special Rapporteur, Michael Lynk was continuously denied entry into Palestine, measures which clearly intended to impede his work monitoring the human rights situation on the ground in the OPT. Similarly, former UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk was denied entry into the OPT by Israel because of his “methodic criticism of Israel”. While UN Special Rapporteur Wibisono even resigned his position as his “efforts to help improve the lives of Palestinian victims of violations under the Israeli occupation have been frustrated every step of the way [by Israel]”.

Israel’s attempts to frustrate the monitoring and documentation of human rights abuses are not limited to this mandate and entry was also denied to UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women its Causes and Consequences, Rashida Manjoo, to prevent her from witnessing first-hand issues related to violence against women in Palestine. Denials of entry were similarly imposed on UN Fact-Finding Missions established to investigate the human rights situation in the OPT.

Meanwhile, in 2020, Israel refused to grant visas to UN staff from the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, expelling 15 international staff from the OPT after 26 years of operating there, a situation which continues to this day. In a statement, then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet warned that “Israel’s treatment of our staff is part of a wider and worrying trend to block human rights access to the occupied Palestinian territory… This raises the question of what exactly the Israeli authorities are trying to hide.”

There is an obvious link between this pattern of attacks on UN experts and staff and Israel’s intent to maintain its prolonged belligerent occupation, de facto and de jure annexations of Palestinian territory, the unlawful transfer in of settlers and institutionalized discriminatory laws, policies and practices to maintain the regime, said the organizations.

This pattern of attacks against UN experts takes place within a shrinking space, which threatens the fundamental right of freedom of expression of those willing to expose Israel’s unacceptable human rights abuses in the OPT. It is time to cease Israel’s onerous and targeted restrictions on this freedom of expression, which in this case stymie reflection on the political enablers of Israel’s continued impunity for severe violations of international law, some of which are peremptory.

The signatories to the statement commended Albanese’s “tireless efforts toward the protection of human rights in the OPT and in raising awareness of the alarming daily violations of Palestinian rights,” calling on third States “to strongly condemn this politically-motivated attack on the Special Rapporteur’s mandate and to compel Israel to comply with its obligations under the Charter of the United Nations.”

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency

Palestinian-Swedish artist Tarik Kiswanson was selected among the four finalists, three of them of Arab origin, for the prestigious French art prize Marcel Duchamp.

The Association for the International Diffusion of French Art (ADIAF) unveiled last week the names of the four artists running for the 23rd edition of Prix Marcel Duchamp: Tarik Kiswanson, Bouchra Khalili, Massinissa Selmani, and Bertille Bak after a long and rigorous process that began 10 months ago.

The finalists will be invited for a three-month exhibition at Centre Pompidou, the opening of which will take place on October 2, and the winner, who will get a prize of €35,000, will be announced on October 16 by an international jury.

Tarik Kiswanson was born in 1986 in Halmstad, Sweden, to Palestinian parents from the Kiswani family who immigrated to Sweden in the early 1980s. Visual artist and poet, he lives and works in Paris, France, and Amman, Jordan. His work encompasses sculpture, writing, performance, drawing, sound, and video works. Notions of rootlessness, regeneration, and renewal are central themes in his practice. Always operating at the intersection of different cultural contexts, his various abstract works examine subjects related to memory, heritage, birth, loss, and belonging. His work can be understood as a cosmology of related conceptual families, each exploring variations on themes like refraction, multiplication, disintegration, levitation, hybridity, and polyphony through their own distinct language.

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency

The Higher Presidential Committee of Church Affairs today called for a decisive global position on saving Palestinian Christians’ presence.

Chairman of the Committee, Ramzi Khoury, issued a letter urging hierarchs and heads of churches worldwide to take a decisive and serious position to save the presence of Palestinian Christians, particularly in the occupied city of East Jerusalem, as Palestinian Christians face the threat of displacement from houses and takeover of their property by the Israeli occupation authorities.

Khoury also urged them to take immediate action and place unceasing pressure on their governments to implement the United Nations’ resolutions calling for enabling the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, including its right to an independent State with East Jerusalem as the capital, while stressing that Palestinian Christians and Muslims alike are entitled to a dignified life and that churches worldwide have to act as partners in the realization of justice and peace.

Pointing to the consequences of the triumph of Israeli Jewish settlers’ religious fundamentalism, particularly in Jerusalem, he warned of the spike in settler attacks, condoned by Israeli police, against church property, as well as of the adverse impacts of the occupation authorities’ decisions on Palestinian Christian presence.

He cautioned that such occupation authorities’ decisions lay the groundwork for a new Nakba, a new catastrophe in full swing, a brand new ethnic cleansing befalling the Palestinian population, especially in Jerusalem.

After making reference to settler takeover of a plot of land belonging to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Silwan in early 2023 and Israel’s far-right national security minister Ben-Gvir’s incursion into Al-Aqsa Mosque’s courtyards, he concluded by successive Israeli governments promote the unified agenda of altering the geographic, demographic and historical character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem in contravention of international law.

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency

The Israeli occupation authorities today demolished a two-storey Palestinian house in Beit Safafa town, southeast of the occupied city of Jerusalem, according to WAFA correspondent.

She said that a sizable police force barged their way into the town, cordoned off the two-storey building of the Sanqrut family before a bulldozer razed it, reducing it to rubble and displacing an entire family.

The property was razed purportedly for being built without a rarely-issued license.

Using the pretext of illegal building, Israel demolishes houses on a regular basis 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 Jews with a goal to offset the demographic balance in favor of the Jewish settlers in 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.

According to a report by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, the Israeli High Court could be liable for war crimes for their policies that led to the dispossession of Palestinians from their properties in Area C of the West Bank.

The report, Fake Justice, shows that the court’s support of Israeli planning policy is tantamount to support for dispossession and forcible transfer of Palestinians, a war crime under international law.

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency

Jordan’s Foreign Ministry today summoned the Israeli ambassador in Amman after Israeli police intercepted the Jordanian ambassador while entering Al Aqasa Mosque compound in the occupied West Bank city of East Jerusalem.

Ministry Spokesperson Sinan Majali stated that the Israeli ambassador Eitan Surkis had been informed with a strongly worded letter for immediate transmission to his government, where the letter affirmed the Jordanian government’s condemnation of all measures aimed at unacceptable interference in the affairs of Al Aqsa Mosque, according to a Foreign Ministry statement.

Majali added that the letter also reminds Israel that the Jordan-run Jerusalem Awqaf and Aqsa Affairs Department has the exclusive authority to administer the holy site’s affairs and manage entries to the site.

The spokesperson said that the letter stressed the importance of Israel, as an occupying power, to adhere to its commitments as per international law, mainly international humanitarian law, regarding Jerusalem and its holy sites, mainly Al Aqsa Mosque.

The letter also urged Israel to abstain from any procedures that tamper with the sanctity of the holy sites and to put an end to attempts to alter the historical and legal status quo or meddle in the affairs of the Jerusalem Awqaf and Aqsa Affairs Department.

Israeli police barred Jordanian ambassador Ghassan Majali entry to the mosque compound via the Lions’ Gate, also known as Bab al-Asbat, stopping him, alleging that he required authorization to enter the premises and eventually asking him to leave.

The diplomat slammed barring him entry to the site as an attempt to alter the status quo at the holy site and undermine Jordan’s status and role as the custodian of the holy sites in the occupied city.

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency

The leaders of Palestine, Egypt and Jordan stressed today the necessity of preserving the legitimate Palestinian rights and ongoing joint efforts to achieve comprehensive peace, according to a statement by the Egyptian Presidency.

During a tripartite summit in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, President Mahmoud Abbas, his Egyptian counterpart Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II discussed the Palestinian cause as well as the recent developments at the regional and international arenas.

The leaders stressed the necessity of preserving the legitimate Palestinian rights and the continuation of their joint efforts to achieve a comprehensive, just and lasting peace based on the two-state solution.

This embodies the establishment of the independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, in accordance with international law, relevant international legitimacy resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative, the statement said.

“President Sisi and King Abdullah affirmed their full support for the efforts of President Abbas in this delicate situation that the Palestinian cause is going through amid increasing regional and international challenges,” the statement added.

The leaders also stressed the need for the international community to provide protection for the Palestinian people and their legitimate rights, urging the international community to join efforts to find a real political horizon that would re-launch serious and effective negotiations to resolve the Palestinian issue on the basis of the two-state solution, cautioning of the danger posed by the continued absence of a political horizon and its repercussions on security and stability.

They also stressed the need to stop all illegal, unilateral Israeli measures that undermine the two-state solution and the prospects of achieving a just and comprehensive peace, including colonial settlement construction, land grab, home demolitions, the forceful displacement of Palestinians from their homes, ongoing Israeli incursions into Palestinian cities, and the violation of the historical and legal status quo in Jerusalem and its sanctities.

The leaders as well stressed the importance of preserving the existing historical and legal situation in Jerusalem and its Islamic and Christian sanctities, in a manner that guarantees respect for the fact that the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, with its entire area of 144 dunums, is purely a place of worship belonging for Muslims, and that the Jordanian Awqaf Ministry’s Department of Endowments of Jerusalem and the Affairs of the Al-Aqsa Mosque is the sole body authorized to manage the affairs of the Mosque and regulate entry into it.

According to the statement, President Sisi and President Abbas also stressed the importance of the historical Hashemite Custodianship over Islamic and Christian holy places in Jerusalem and its role in protecting these sanctities and their Arab, Islamic and Christian identity.

The three leaders emphasized the need to unify the Palestinian ranks and end the division in the interest of the Palestinian people, given that the division undermines the unity of the Palestinian position.

They also emphasized the need to take serious and effective measures to alleviate the deteriorating living conditions of the Palestinian people in the besieged Gaza Strip.

In this context, King Abdullah II and President Abbas praised the Egyptian efforts exerted to maintain calm in the Gaza Strip and to rebuild the coastal enclave, reaffirming the responsibility of international donors in the efforts to reconstruct Gaza.

The leaders also stressed the importance of the international community to continue to support the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), and the need to provide the financial support it needs to keep providing vital services to Palestinian refugees in accordance with its UN mandate, especially in light of the important humanitarian and development role that the UN agency plays in favor of the Palestinian people.

The leaders agreed to continue intensive consultation and coordination within the framework of the tripartite coordination formula at all levels in order to crystallize a vision to activate efforts to resume negotiations and to work with partners to revive the long-stalled peace process according to the approved terms of reference, with the ultimate goal of helping the Palestinian people obtain all their legitimate rights, mainly right to freedom, independence and establishment of a sovereign state on their national soil on the basis of the two-state solution.

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency

President Mahmoud Abbas today appreciated the Egyptian-Jordanian support for the Palestinian position rejecting unilateral Israeli actions.

President Abbas made the remarks in a speech during a tripartite summit in the Egyptian Capital Cairo with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and King Abdullah II of Jordan.

President Abbas stressed the need for each party to assume its responsibilities on the basis of the signed agreements, in a way that enhances confidence and establishes the basis for reopening the political horizon.

In his speech, President Abbas also stressed the importance of this tripartite summit and its mechanisms at all levels, which will discuss ways to support the Palestinian cause, and confront the program and practices of the new far-right supremacist Israeli government.

He noted that the summit will also work to halt the Israeli unilateral actions, create a political horizon, and enable the Palestinian people to obtain their legitimate rights by ending the Israeli occupation of the land of the State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital on the 1967 borders.

President Abbas also appreciated the positions of President Sisi and King Abdullah II in support of the Palestinian people and their just cause.

He expressed his hope that the Palestinian position regarding the initiation of applying a number of procedures at the level of the United Nations, international courts, and other procedures in accordance with the decisions of the Palestinian Central Council will garner support.

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency

Palestinian Engineer Aref Husseini, Founder and CEO of Al Nayzak Organization, received the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship Social Innovator of the Year Award in a ceremony attended by over 1600 international dignitaries, diplomats and professionals, according to Al Nayzak.

The educational and scientific organization said in a press statement that “this award comes as high recognition for Husseini’s innovative work and establishment of Al Nayzak Organization and the Jerusalem Innovation Park, which currently serves 30,000 youth of multiple age groups and diverse backgrounds.”

“Al Nayzak empowers youth to be innovative, creative citizens who have the power to change their socioeconomic status through scientific innovation, education and professional growth,” it added.

“This year, the foundation received 1500 nominees from 190 countries. All nominees were selected through a rigorous process led by a world class international committee who closely examined each candidate’s career, achievement, and impact. Husseini is one of the sixteen Social Innovators of the Year 2023 chosen after the long selection process was completed.” It went on to say.

The Schwab foundation was founded by Professor Clause Schwab, the founder and president of the World Economic Forum, in Switzerland in 1998. Since its inception, 400 social innovators were chosen for this award for their work in changing the lives of over 722 million people. The foundation celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2023.

Al Nayzak defines itself as an independent educational and scientific organization founded in Jerusalem in 2003. It is a non-profit, non-partisan organization specializing in education, mentoring and research in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), and other educational and applied sciences and Vocational and Technical Training (TVET). Through its work, Al Nayzak empowers innovation and entrepreneurship.

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency