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Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center www.imemc.org, for Wednesday August 25th, 2010.
Israeli school given permission to discriminate based on race, and Bedouin women hold non-violent protest against home demolitions. These stories and more coming up, stay tuned.
500 Israeli citizens, escorted by dozens of military vehicles, drove by bus deep into the West Bank on Wednesday in a provocative visit to a West Bank holy site.
Dozens of buses and military vehicles entered the West Bank in violation of the Oslo agreement and other signed accords, in the second such incident this month. On August 5th, around 300 Israelis were escorted into the same area to visit a site known as ‘Joseph’s Tomb’. In Nablus.
During the incursion, Israeli military forces deployed in the area implemented increased security checks on the Palestinian residents of the region, delaying some people for several hours at checkpoints in order to allow the Jewish worshippers to pass freely.
Around 700 Bedouin women held a protest in Jerusalem challenging the demolition of their villages by Israeli forces. They travelled to Jerusalem from the Negev desert in southern Israel, where they live in ‘unrecognized’ villages that have been razed multiple times since Israel was created in 1948.
They gathered outside the Israeli Ministry of the Interior on Tuesday, after the destruction of al-Arakid village this past weekend, holding signs and chanting slogans.
The women also submitted a letter of demands to the Israeli Interior Minister’s advisor on minority affairs, Saeed Muadi. The demands included a recognition of their villages, and equal treatment under the law.
Israeli authorities have destroyed hundreds of Bedouin villages in the Negev, many of them multiple times, since 1948.
The Israeli education ministry has approved a new settlement school that will discriminate based on race.
Several months ago, a religious school in the illegal Israeli settlement of Immanuel was criticized for segregating white Jewish students from non-white Jewish students in classes.
Originally, the school was fined for the policy of racial segregation, because the school was state funded.
Now, the Israeli education ministry has agreed with the white parents’ request to allow the school to continue with its racial discrimination under private funding.
74 white girls who have been studying in a building next to the school will now be allowed to study in whites-only classrooms that are privately funded, as their parents claim they do not want their girls to study in racially-mixed classrooms.
And in international news, a protester was arrested in Chicago for challenging the city’s ‘sister-city’ relationship with the Israeli settlement of Petach Tikva. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Chicago called on the city to end its relationship with the settlement, which was constructed on stolen Palestinian land in violation of international law. The protester disrupted a cultural exchange event in which Israeli musicians performed for a Chicago audience.
Thank you for joining us from occupied Bethlehem, you have been listening to Palestine Today from the International Middle East Media Center, for constant updates, please visit our website at www.imemc.org this report has been brought to you by George Rishmawi and Husam Qassis.
