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Welcome to Palestine Today a service of the International Middle East Media Centre, www.imemc.org for Wednesday, August 04, 2010.
Israel demolishes Bedouin village again and the real picture of the settlement ‘freeze’ emerges these stories and more coming up, stay tuned.
Wednesday morning Israel’s Land Administration razed the rebuilt village with the protection of Israeli security forces and they arrested six individuals.
The Bedouin village of al-Arakib was first destroyed last week as the government of Israel does not recognize it and deems it illegal for being on state land.
Since the previous destruction last week, residents of the village have erected tents and other simple structures in a show of defiance to the Israeli government.
An Arab member of the Knesset, Talab al-Sana, barricaded himself in one of the structures in this most recent confrontation. The security forces forcibly removed him from where he was staging his protest and is said to have fainted in their custody.
Peace Now, an Israeli group which focuses on illegal settlements, saw an incredible amount of construction in the settlements in spite of the supposed freeze on new construction.
The freeze was put in place this past January by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and is set to expire at the end of September.
Peace Now documented 492 violations of this construction freeze. Using aerial photographs and other tools the group determined that construction had begun on over 600 units in sixty different settlements throughout the West Bank. 492 of these 600 were directly in violation of the freeze.
Other research by the group indicates that in a similar period of construction without a freeze, there would be construction of about 1130 new homes. The freeze essentially only slowed construction by about half.
In an update of yesterday’s conflict between Israel and Lebanon, the armed clash left a total of five dead at the cessation of hostilities.
Three Lebanese soldiers, an Israeli commander, and a Lebanese journalist died in the confrontation.
A spokesman for the Lebanese military told a Lebanese newspaper that it had fired first claiming a right to defend its national sovereignty.
The Lebanese army supposedly engaged the Israeli unit with the belief that they were cutting down a tree on the Lebanese side of the border.
A UNIFIL representative also substantiated Israeli claims that at no time did the Israeli troops cross the border into Lebanon.
Sixteen people were arrested in al-Walaja village, including the village’s mayor, as they protested the construction of the annexation wall around their village.
The group, comprised of Palestinians, Israelis and internationals, was arrested following forty minutes of protest. They succeeded in preventing construction from continuing during that time.
If construction of the wall is allowed to continue in the village it will cut the population off entirely from their legally owned lands that make up their livelihood.
Thank you for joining us from occupied Bethlehem, you have been listening to Palestine Today from the International Middle East Media Center, for constant update, please visit our website at www.imemc.org. This report has been brought to you by Brian Ennis.
