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Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, for Wednesday August 31, 2011.
More Israeli settlers vandalism in the West Bank and Israel reveals the name of man who attacked Israeli settlers in Tel Aviv, these stories and more coming up, stay tuned.
Israeli settlers uprooted olive trees in Deir Istia village near Salfit, in the western part of the West Bank, Wednesday morning.
Nathmi Salman, head of the village council said that settlers uprooted 32 trees that belong to Abdel Karim Mansour.
Salman added that the settlers came from the nearby Yakir settlement, noting that this is not the first time the area was subject to similar attacks, due to the high number of Israeli illegal settlements in that region.
The Israeli military revealed the name of the Palestinian who wounded eight Israelis in Tel Aviv on Sunday night.
The Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth said in its online edition that the man was identified as Mohammad Sa’fan, 20 from the West Bank city of Nablus.
Sa’fan allegedly hit some Israelis with stolen taxi and stabbed others before the Israeli police managed to subdue him and take him into custody. Two of the wounded are in serious conditions.
The sources did not reveal further information about the intention behind the attack, but said that Sa’fan claimed responsibility for this attack.
Reuven Rivlin, head of the Israeli Knesset said on Wednesday that all the land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people and peace will never prevail until the Palestinians accept to live together with the Jews on this land.
Rivlin’s statement came during his visit to the illegal settlement of Itamar near Nablus. Rivlin added that settlements are part of Zionism.
Rivlin is known to be a far right wing member of Knesset from ruling Likud party. He rejects the two-state solution and believes that the West Bank and Gaza Strip must be annexed to Israel.
On the other hand, a republican congresswoman introduced a bill, along with 57 co-sponsors, asking Congress to block U.S. funds for any United Nations entity that supports giving Palestine an elevated status at the UN.
Israeli media sources reported that Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is also seeking to ban U.S. contributions to the UN Human Rights Council and an anti-racism conference seen as a platform for anti-Israel rhetoric.
Ros-Lehtinen is known of her anti-UN positions. She wrote in her letter to her colleagues, that a Palestinian self-declared state ‘would short-circuit the negotiating process, and would severely undermine opportunities for peace between Israel and the Palestinians’.
That was some of the news from Palestine Today, for more updates, please visit our website at www.imemc.org. Thank you for joining us from occupied Bethlehem. This report has been brought to you by Hussam Qassis and me, George Rishmawi.
