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Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, for Monday October 24, 2011
Four are injured during a funeral procession over the weekend, and an Israeli teen is stabbed in Jerusalem, these stories and more coming up; so stay tuned.
Over the weekend, Israeli troops reportedly fired into a Palestinian funeral procession. Despite having permission to cross the gates through the Israeli Annexation Wall, the soldiers on duty refused to allow them passage as a group.
The mourners had to pass through the checkpoint to reach the cemetery, which is encircled by the wall.
An Israeli Army spokesperson confirmed the incident, stating that the soldiers acted within military protocol, and stated that two Palestinians were lightly injured.
Eyewitnesses stated that they fired into the crowd, and that there were four who needed treatment, three of whom were sons of the deceased.
After an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.2 and a secondary tremor measuring 6.1 struck Turkey, Israel offered to assist in the search and rescue operations. Turkey declined the help, with a Turkish official claiming they had given similar answers to many other countries who offered.
Relationships between the two countries have been strained recently, after the Israeli Ambassador to Turkey was ousted from Ankara, following Israel’s refusal to apologize for the storming of the Gaza Aid flotilla, where nine Turkish activists were killed.
Over one hundred are confirmed dead, and the government suspects that up to one thousand people could have perished.
Israeli Ynet News has reported that students of the Ohel Shem High School, in Ramat Gan, claim that Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, who recently spoke at their school, preached that marrying non-Jews plays in the hands of the Nazis.
The Rabbi, head of the Yad Vashem (Israel’s official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust), uttered his comments during a lecture on the Holocaust. He also reportedly declared that “Jews who walk away from religion are destroying Judaism.”
Many students left the lecture in protest of the Rabbis comments, and some students were angered by those who protested, insisting that their actions showed disrespect.
Senior Israeli security sources said that Tel Aviv is concerned about Egyptian and Jordanian intentions to allow Hamas to open offices in Amman and Cairo, and considered the move as “granting legitimacy to terror.
They added added that Israel will be holding talks about the issue with a number of concerned countries, mainly referring to its strongest ally, the United States.
The leadership of Hamas in exile is hosted by Syria, but after the Syrian revolution started, the movement started talking about the possibility of moving its offices to another country.
Israeli security and political leaders also stated that, by hosting Hamas, Cairo will be jeopardizing the close relations between the two countries.
Lastly, an Israeli teenager is currently recovering in hospital, after being stabbed on Saturday in Ramot, north of Jerusalem.
Yehuda Ne’emad, seventeen, was sitting with a friend when a man approached the two teens with a knife, and stabbed the youth in the back and stomach.
The attacker is described as Arab-looking, and fled to the nearby village of Beit Iksa, in East Jerusalem. Police and army searched for the attacker, but found no sign of him
The police have indicated nationalistic motivations for the attack as the most likely cause, but thay as of yet have no evidence or clues to know the reason behind the seemingly random attack,
Thats all for today from the IMEMC. This was the Monday October 24th daily roundup of news from the Occupied Palestinian Territories. We hope you will join us again tomorrow. This was brought to you by Husam Qassis and me William Gibson
