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Welcome to Palestine Today a service of the International Middle East Media Centre, www.imemc.org for Monday, June 28 2010.
Turkey closes its airspace to the Israeli military, and the Jerusalem planning committee unveils its ‘master plan’ for Palestinian areas of the city, these stories and more coming up, stay tuned.
The Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told the press in Canada at the G20 summit that Israeli military flights have been from using Turkish airspace. The ban comes after the attack on the Turkish ship, Mavi Marmara. The attack left nine people dead.
The ban come to light as Israeli news outlets reported over the weekend that Turkish flight officials barred an Israeli plane carrying military officers from entering Turkish airspace. They were on their way to tour Auschwitz in Poland.
Turkey has asked that Israel apologize for its actions, return the seized ships, pay compensation to the families of the victims, and participate in a fair and international investigation of the events
The diplomatic rift between Turkey and Israel continues to grow wider as Israel is reluctant to acquiesce in the face of Turkey’s requests. Turkey has repeatedly stated that when its requests are met it will normalize relations with the state of Israel.
In Jerusalem, the Planning Committee for the city has announced its new master plan, its vision of what the city will look like in the future.
Hardly surprising, this new plan calls for the large-scale expulsion of Palestinian East Jerusalemites in favor of Jewish settlers and Israeli expansion past the Green Line.
There is a 60-day period of public comment followed by an almost assured acceptance of the plan. Palestinians rarely have a say in proceedings like this as they are not represented in the planning committee of Jerusalem.
The expansion will likely cause even more delays in the peace process as the Palestinians have always said that they consider East Jerusalem the capitol of a future Palestinian state.
Scores of people were injured Sunday as clashes with police and army occurred in the Silwan area of Jerusalem. The area has been in the news over proposed Israeli plans to confiscate land inhabited and owned by Palestinians to build a tourism center, park and new settler residences.
The clashes erupted after settlers broke into the house of a family in the area and assaulted them. When Israeli soldiers arrived they failed to evacuate the settlers and instead continued the harassment of the victimized family.
Around eighty people were injured from tear gas inhalation and assaults from the military and police.
Early Monday morning Israeli forces invaded several West Bank towns and kidnapped ten civilians supposedly on wanted lists assembled by occupation forces.
The kidnapped civilians were arrested in their respective cities, Nablus, Hebron, Ramallah, and Bethlehem.
Thank you for joining us from occupied Bethlehem, you have been listening to Palestine Today from the International Middle East Center, for constant update, please visit our website at www.imemc.org. This report has been brought to you by Brian Ennis.
