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Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, for Wednesday August 22, 2012.
Israeli settler attacks continue against Palestinian communities in the West Bank, meanwhile, verdict in the death of American Activist Rachel Corrie to be announced next week,. These stories and more, coming up, stay tuned.
A number of extremist Israeli settlers invaded, on Wednesday at dawn, the village of Awarta, near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, and tried to torch two Palestinian cars after writing racist graffiti against the Palestinians.
Local sources reported that the settlers came from Itamar illegal settlement, built on Palestinian lands, near Awarta village, east of Nablus.
The sources added that the settlers wrote anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian graffiti on the walls of some homes, and fled the scene after some residents noticed them.
The attack is the latest of a series of seriously escalating attacks carried out by extremist settlers against the Palestinians and their property.
The Rachel Corrie Foundation issued a press release stating that the verdict in the civil lawsuit filed by the family of American peace activist, Rachel Corrie, killed by Israel in 2003, will be announced on August 28, 2012.
The court session will be held at District Court in Haifa, at 9:00 a.m. the foundation said.
Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American from Olympia, Washington, was crushed to death March 16, 2003, by an Israeli military Caterpillar D9-R bulldozer while non-violently protesting demolition of Palestinian civilian homes in Rafah ,in Gaza Strip as part of the nonviolent intervention by the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).
The lawsuit, filed in 2005 on behalf of the Corries by attorney Hussein abu Hussein, charges the State of Israel with responsibility for the killing of Rachel’s and failure to conduct a full and credible investigation in the case.
Rachel’s father, Craig Corrie, stated that the lawsuit against Israel for killing his daughter “is just a small step in our family’s nearly decade-long search for truth and justice”.
In previous cases, like the murder of 22-year old British activist Tom Hurndall by Israeli military gun fire in Rafah in April 2003, Israeli Private, Taysir-al-Heib was sentenced to eight years for the unlawful killing of Hurndall.
But an army committee said he was no longer a threat and has agreed to release him 18 months before his sentence expires.
Palestinians Minister of Detainee, Issa Qaraqe’, stated that eight Palestinian detainees, imprisoned at the Ramon Israeli prison, were injured after Israeli soldiers broke into their rooms and searched them.
Qaraqe’ said that under-cover forces of the Israeli army broke into one of the sections in Ramon under the pretext of searching it.
The soldiers tried to force the detainees to undergo a strip-search but they refused. Soldiers then attacked them leading to clashes that resulted in eight injuries among the detainees.
By this we come to the end of the news for today, This was the Wednesday August 22, 2012 round up of news from the Occupied Palestinian Territories. For more news and updates please visit our website at www.imemc.org. Today’s report has been brought to you by Husam Qassis and me, George Rishmawi.
