Palestine Today 122308

Tuesday December 23, 2008 19:14 by IMEMC News - Audio Dept

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Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center
www.imemc.org, for Tuesday December 23 2008

LEAD: Hamas blames Palestinian Authority for collaborating with Israeli occupation, Israeli police aret Israeli solidarity activist, Neta Golan these stories and more coming up.

Al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement, held the Palestinian Security Forces loyal to the Fatah movement responsible for the life of Rajab Ash-Sharif who was thought to be dead since 2002.

The Brigades accused the security forces of collaborating with the occupation because the Palestinian Security Forces announced that his arrests came after four years of gathering intelligence information.

Also n Monday, the Islamic Jihad Movement stated that it agreed with all other factions to stop the firing of homemade shells for twenty-four hours in order to allow the entry of dozens of trucks carrying food and humanitarian supplies into the Gaza Strip.

The statement came after Egypt requested a period of calm in order to facilitate the entry of aid to the residents of Gaza.

A report that was released recently by the Israeli Information Center For Human Rights, B’Tselem, demanded Israel to evacuate Ofra settlement since it is considered, by Israeli law, as an illegal settlement outpost because 58% of the settlement is privately owned by Palestinian residents of Yabroud and Silwan.

In other news, Israeli police arrested Neta Golan, an Israeli citizen and co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), while she was attempting to leave the Gaza Strip through the Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing, Waffa news agency reported.

Neta Golan was one of the 17 activists that sailed into Gaza on December 20th on the S.S. Liberty, the fifth international solidarity boat, representing the Free Gaza Movement, to break Israel’s unjust siege of the Gaza Strip.

In news from Gaza, Abdelnaser al-Ajrami, head of the bakeries society in Gaza, stated to media outlets that more than 27 bakeries out of a total of 47 in Gaza city, have been shut down completely due to a lack of cooking gas and wheat, as Israel has kept closed commercial border crossings for almost two months now.

In Egypt, new talks are in the works in regards to a new Egyptian-brokered truce. Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar said in a statement to Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram that his Palestinian resistance movement is willing to renew the truce in Gaza with Israel based on the conditions of the original truce agreement, conditions of the original truce that Hamas, and much of the international community, believe that Israel never lived up to.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas is expected to meet today with his Egyptian counterpart Husni Mubarak, and later on with Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni in Cairo, over the latest developments in Gaza.

Thank you for joining us from occupied Bethlehem. You have been listening to Palestine Today from the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org. This report has been brought to you by Justin Theriault and Husam Qassis

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