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Welcome to this Week in Palestine, a service of the International Middle East Media Center www.imemc.org for July 16 to 23 2010.
Palestinians worried about failure of a two-state solution and Israeli troops continue with their incursions into Palestinian civilian areas, these stories and more coming up, stay tuned.
Nonviolence
Let us begin our weekly report as usual with the nonviolent activities in the West Bank with IMEMC’s Bart Farell
Israeli and international supporters joined Palestinian villagers in Bil’in, Nil’in in the central West Bank in addition to Wadi Rahal and Al Ma’ssra in the southern West Bank. Israeli troops used tear gas, sound grenades and rubber-coated steel bullets to suppress the protests at several locations.
Protests kicked- off shortly after the midday prayers on Friday and headed towards the Israeli separation wall.
In the village of Bil’in an Israeli activist sustained ahead injury after soldiers fired a tear gas canister at her. Troops also detained Louisa Morgantini, an ex-EU parliamentarian, along with three others before releasing them shortly thereafter
In the nearby Nil’in village no one suffered from the effects of tear gas inhalation or sustained injuries from rubber bullets for the first time in years. The group of Israeli, local, and international activists marched to the separation wall, chanted slogans, and returned to the town.
In the village of Al Ma’ssara, near Bethlehem, people marched after the midday prayers towards the construction site of the wall. Troops stopped the protesters near the village entrance and used tear gas and sound grenades to suppress them.
Israeli troops also beat an international supporter with their batons and lightly injured her; while others suffered from the effects of tear gas inhalation.
In the nearby Wadi Rahal villagers and their supporters reached the construction site of the wall being built on their lands.
Soldiers used tear gas to stop them from protesting, five villagers were treated for the effects of tear gas inhalation and an Israeli activist was arrested by the Israeli troops during the demonstration.
For IMEMC.org this is Bart Farrell.
West Bank & Gaza:
Israeli troops kill three Palestinians and wound dozens in the West Bank and Gaza and demolition of Palestinian property increases. IMEMC’s Brian Ennis reports.
Israeli occupation forces arrested twenty-four Palestinian civilians, including seven children, and two women in the West Bank.
Israeli troops stationed at military checkpoints and border crossings in the West Bank arrested three Palestinian civilians.
Israeli settlers have continued to attack Palestinian civilians and property, and in one instance on Thursday, settlers with the protection of soldiers set fire to a number of olive trees in Saffa near Ramallah. Seven square kilometers were burned.
One Palestinian civilian was injured by Israeli settlers in Hebron as will.
The Israeli military demolished seventy-four Palestinian civilian facilities throughout Area ‘C.’ this week Among those were seven structures in al-Lubban al-Gharbi village, northwest of Ramallah, consisting of homes and other structures.
They also destroyed ten stables belonging to a man in Jenin district and a couple of adjacent fruit and vegetable stands.
Early Thursday morning Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 25 year-old Palestinian man as he was trying to enter the illegal Barqan settlement in Salfit. Palestinian officials condemned the ongoing Israeli policy of ‘shoot first and ask questions later.’ The man was unarmed.
In the Gaza Strip, on 21 July 2010, the Israeli military killed two Palestinian resistance fighters and wounded eight civilians, including five children and a woman, when they fired flechette shells at the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun.
For Imemc.org this is Brian Ennis
Political
On the political level, Palestinians are demanded to move to direct talks, however they insist on border issues to settled as a pre-requisite amidst concerns of an Israeli sabotage of the two-state solution.
Palestinians are demanded to move to direct talks, however they insist on border issues to settled as a pre-requisite amidst concerns of an Israeli sabotage of the two-state solution.
The Palestinian cabinet stressed in its weekly meeting that Israel should recognize the borders of the pre-1967 war for any future Palestinian state in addition to ensuring international presence to guard the borders for them to start direct talks, a demand that Israel completely rejects.
The cabinet said it will focus its diplomatic efforts on this issue to combat the Israeli deliberate attempts to sabotage the two-state solution.
The cabinet ministers were specifically pointing at the latest Israeli destruction of a Palestinian village of Farsiya in the Jordan Vally which was declared a closed military zone.
Israel is planning to keep the longest ground border of the Jordan valley under its control under any final settlement with the Palestinians, which will render the West Bank into an area totally confined inside Israel.
On his part, Egyptian President Hossni Mubarak rejected Israel’s proposed plans for the borders of a future Palestinian state during a meeting with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Cairo last week.
He based this rejection upon what the Arab League in 2002 cited as acceptable borders for a future Palestinian state. This largely entails having the borders exist along the 1967 border as outlined in the Arab Peace Initiative and UN resolutions 242 and 338, the possibility of a few small discrepancies is allowed.
The Arab League presented an Arab Peace Initiative, which grants Israeli full normalization and end of enmity in exchange of a full withdrawal from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in order to establish a Palestinian viable state on the entire territory of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Israel has fully rejected the plan and immediately invaded all the West Bank and started to build the wall in the West Bank which shrinks the area of the West Bank into half.
In the mean time, the US announced this week that it would upgrade the status of the Palestinian delegation, actually a PLO office, to that of a ‘general delegation.’
This change in status finally raises the Palestinian Authority in Washington to a level it has had for some time throughout European countries.
‘General delegation’ is still a step lower than embassy, which it has in many African and Asian countries and in a sparse few European nations. Palestinian representatives at last enjoy the privileges of diplomatic immunity and are permitted to fly the Palestinian flag outside of its building.
and that was just some of the news from this week in Palestine, 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 George Rishmawi.
