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Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, for Thursday February 23rd, 2012.
Palestinian factions start their meeting in Cairo to proceed with the reconciliation, meanwhile another Palestinian prisoner starts an open-ended hunger strike, these stories and more, coming up, stay tuned.
Israeli forces arrested on Thursday a Palestinian woman allegedly suspected of attempting to stab an Israeli soldier in the West Bank city of Hebron.
Sources at the Palestinian prisoners society reported that Aisha Ghannam, 24 was detained by Israeli soldiers and was beaten with rifle buts and kicked causing bruises in several parts of her body.
The source added that she has been taken to Etzion military base north of the city and will be transferred later to Hasharon jail for women inside Israel. There are currently six Palestinian women in Israeli jails serving varied sentences.
In related news, Palestinian female prisoner Hana Shalabi is on her seventh day of an open-ended hunger strike protesting her administrative detention. Shalabi was detained on February 16 and was put under administrative detention for 6 months.
Shalabi was recently released as part of the prisoner swap between Hamas and Israel when Hamas released the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and Israel released around 1000 prisoners.
She was under administrative detention for two years as her detention was renewed four times.
In related news, two Palestinian teens were released after spending three months in an Israeli jail on suspicion of throwing a firebomb at Israeli troops. The two were released because the border policemen who incriminated them turned out to have submitted false reports.
The bomb was allegedly thrown at a Jerusalem checkpoint on October 21. However according to Israeli Police records, there were no firebomb attacks on October 21. moreover, an Israeli officer who testified that he had witnessed the incident was not at the checkpoint that day.
In political news, Palestinian leaders started their meetings in the Egyptian capital of Cairo Thursday to finalize the reconciliation agreement hammered in Doha-Qatar few months ago. The meeting headed by the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas joined Secretary Generals and leaders of all the Palestinian factions.
The meeting will discuss among other issues, the formation of a unity government to be headed by Abbas in addition to holding General and presidential elections soon in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Abbas met with Hamas’ chief Sheikh Khaled Mashaal in Cairo on Wednesday to set the final issues of the meeting agenda. Both Abbas and Mashaal affirmed their commitment to proceeding with the reconciliation among Palestinian political factions and end internal division.
Internal unrest between Fatah and Hamas started in June of 2007 after Hamas forcibly assumed control over the Gaza Strip in a bloody fight with Fatah during which over 250 Palestinians were killed.
That’s all for today from the IMEMC News, this was the Thursday February 23rd daily roundup of news from the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Join us again tomorrow for more reports and update or visit our website www.imemc.org. This has been brought to you by Husam Qassis and me, George Rishmawi.
