Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, for Wednesday, August, 30, 2017.
Troops invade West Bank communities search homes and detain civilians including local musicians. These stories, and more, coming up, stay tuned.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) has reported that Israeli soldiers have abducted overnight and at dawn Wednesday, seventeen Palestinians, including a woman who is also a former political prisoner, in different parts of the occupied West Bank. The PPS said that homes searches and abductions were reported in Bethlehem and Hebron, southern West Bank, the central West Bank city of Ramallah, Tulkarem in northern West Bank in addition of Jerusalem.
Among those detained by the Israeli army was Palestinian folk singer Mohammad Barghouti, 23. sraeli soldiers raided, early Wednesday, Barghouti’s home in the village of Kufr Ein, to the north of Ramallah, and abducted him. They also raided the home of his organ player Naji Rimawi and the owner of a local music studio and artist, Nazzal Barghouti, and took them into custody as well.
Barghouti detained after he dedicated the song to Omar al-Abed, from the neighboring village of Kobar, who recently stabbed and killed three Israeli settlers in the illegal settlement of Halamish. Al-Abed was shot and injured and is now facing charges for the killings.
Israeli soldiers, who have been terrorizing the village of Kobar and its 3,000 residents since the incident, in a revenge act, were not satisfied with only detaining the three musicians, but also seized hard discs and CDs of Barghouti’s songs that he normally sings in weddings or other local events. They also beat his father, who had to be transferred to hospital for treatment.
In other news, Israeli rights group B’Tselem released a video Wednesday showing a group of settlers from Israel’s illegal Kiryat Arba settlement, in the southern occupied West Bank district of Hebron, hurling abuse through a loudspeaker at Palestinians in the area. In the presence of Israeli soldiers and police, settlers used a loudspeaker to hurl insults at Palestinians in the Al-Hariqah neighborhood, insulting Islam and the Prophet Mohammed.
According to B’Tselem’s statement, once the settlers noticed a Palestinian woman – a local volunteer for the group – filming them, their scathing language was directed at her and they began to threaten her with sexual violence. B’Tselem noted that the incident continued for hours. Despite the disturbing threats, Israeli forces did not intervene. Occupation forces have been known to standby idly as Palestinians are abused by Israeli settlers.
And that’s all for today from the IMEMC News; this was the Wednesday, August, 30, 2017, news round-up from the Occupied Palestinian Territories. From more news and updates, please visit our website at www.imemc.org today’s report has been brought to you by George Rishmawi and me Ghassan Bannoura.
