Day: 4 October 2023

The spitting phenomena by Jewish fundamentalists against Christians in the Old City of Jerusalem continued unabated today. Majed Rishiq, a guard at the Church of Flagellation in the Old City of occupied Jerusalem, witnessed today this phenomenon. He said ultra-Orthodox Jews spitting at churches and Christian worshipers in Jerusalem has recently intensified. Ultra-Orthodox Jews celebrating their Sukkot holiday in the narrow alleyways of the Old City were caught on tape spitting at Christian pilgrims and churches. The rise of extremism in Israel and hatred of non-Jews is fueled by fascist Israeli cabinet ministers such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who said that spitting on Christians is an old Jewish tradition. The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates condemned the phenomenon of spitting on Christian churches, pilgrims and tourists in the Old City of Jerusalem, considering this behavior ‘a manifestation of the culture of occupation, hatred, racism, and malice spread by senior rabbis and extremist religious schools, whose followers take pride in practicing this behavior.’ It said that these attacks ‘are part of the oppression, abuse, restrictions, displacement, and Judaization that occupied Jerusalem, its Old City, and its Christian and Islamic holy sites are being subjected to, which requires urgent international intervention to force the Israeli government to stop its violations and crimes against Jerusalem.’

Source: En – Palestine news & Information Agency – WAFA

The House of Representatives, in its session Wednesday, headed by the Speaker of the House, Yahya Ali Al-Rai, approved the report of the Water and Environment Committee regarding the results of its field trip to the city of Hajjah to discuss the problem of the lack of water and its high prices.

This comes after the commitment of the government side, represented by the Minister of Water and Environment in the caretaker government, Engineer Abdul Raqeeb Al-Sharmani, to implement the House recommendations in this regard.

Source: Yemen News Agency

Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) Mayor, Yousef Shawarbeh, said the municipality seeks to establish an “integrated and comprehensive” control center to manage its main operations, crises and risks in the capital and link it with all the GAM’s operations rooms and partners from the relevant national institutions. Addressing Third Forum of Mayors 2023, held in Geneva, Shawarbeh added that the GAM identified roadmap projects, which focus on alleviating Amman’s traffic challenges and building a data platform for the smart city to manage Amman’s infrastructure systems. Shawarbeh noted GAM is the first national institution to provide its services electronically by launching 134 e-services, at a rate of 100%, which reduced number of citizens’ visits to process transactions from 18 million annually to 270,000. Additionally, Shawarbeh stressed GAM’s commitment to implement sustainable development goals to achieve more successes that contribute to improving citizens’ lives at all levels. Amman, he noted, is home to more than 4.5 million people, which constitutes more than 42% of the Kingdom’s total population, and faces urban challenges, primarily shortage of natural resources and increasing population growth due to migration and repeated waves of refugees that caused pressure on the city’s infrastructure. These factors also caused high cost of municipal services, he said, referring also to consequences of climate change impacts, which require efforts to keep pace with rapid growth with plans and programs that enhance life quality to build resilient and sustainable cities. Shawarbeh added that the GAM was keen to contribute to international community’s efforts to confront challenges in sustainable urban development fields, and developed and prepared a set of plans to address these hardships and improve life quality by implementing various projects.

Source: Jordan News Agency