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Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Centre, www.imemc.org, for Wednesday December 28, 2011.
Thousands gather in a city in Israel to protest gender segregation, and two air-strikes in Gaza kill three and injure 11, these stories and more coming up; so stay tuned
In separate Israeli Air Strikes, occurring only hours apart, three Palestinians were killed, and eleven others were wounded. The first strike hit a motorcycle on the main road in Jabaliya, in the north of the Gaza Strip, killing its rider, and wounding two others. Palestinian sources confirmed the strike, and indicated that the victim was an Islamic Jihad operative.
The second strike was launched several hours later, targeting a Global Jihad resistance cell. The Israeli army have identified its intended targets, Rami Jaber Kaferana, and Mohammad al-Shaker, both residents of Gaza. It has yet to be confirmed if these two men were those killed in the attack.
On December 12, a group of extremist Israelis broke into and vandalised a military base in the north of the West Bank. An investigation by the Israeli police has found that a group of right-wing Israeli Jerusalemite students organised a bus to the West Bank with the intention of attacking the base.
The students of the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva religious school were led by a West Bank settler on a hired bus to the base and stopped of on the way to pick up old tires ,and were even caught on film buying several cans of gasoline. They burned tires at the entrance to the base, and several entered the barracks and vandalised buildings and vehicles.
On other news late on Tuesday, thousands of local residents gathered in the Israeli village of Beit Shemesh, protesting the radically changing demographic of their city by the ultra-Orthodox community. The rapidly growing religious community has taken over vast swathes of the city, and have launched countless campaigns of fear and intimidation against the moderate and secular majority.
Children are spat at and physically accosted, as are the parents who try to intervene. There were recently signs demanding gender segregated pavements in certain areas, and journalists have been assaulted and attacked by large groups of Haredi men.
Local residents claim the mayor, Moshe Abutbul, is pandering to the ultra-Orthodox, and wants to see the secular and moderates forced out of the city. Most of the 30,000 planned housing units to be built are earmarked for ultra conservative neighbourhoods and families.
The continual harassment and abuse of women and girls in the city culminated in a documentary shown recently, of an eight year old Jewish girl, as she suffers abuse as she walks to school due to her immodest dress, which consists of a long sleeved blouse and long skirt.
That’s all for today from the IMEMC News, this was the Wednesday December 28 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.
