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Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org for Wednesday January 4th, 2012
A six year old Palestinian boy is detained and interrogated in East Jerusalem, and another price tag attack leaves two cars torched, these stories and more, coming up, stay tuned.
Israeli security forces infiltrated a demonstration in Al-Esawiyya town, in East Jerusalem. Clashes erupted between the army and local youth and children on the streets, during which time a young boy was taken.
The grandfather of six year old Mohammad Ali Dirbas claims he was walking to the shop when he was arrested by the Israeli military, which took him to a nearby police station and interrogated him unsupervised, before releasing him after four hours.
The chid stated that the police “tried to terrify me, but they can’t scare me, they must leave our land.’
Early this Wednesday morning, two Palestinian-owned cars were torched in East Jerusalem, with graffiti sprayed nearby stating Price Tag and Revenge. The attack in the village of Sharafat, near Gilo settlement, have opened a police investigation, but not developments or arrests have as of yet been made.
The term price tag is used by Israeli settlers in retaliation to any anti-settler announcements or activities by the Israeli government.
In other news, the budget for private security guards to protect Jewish residents living in settlements in East Jerusalem has rapidly expanded from 7 million New Israeli Shekels to over 54 million between 1991 and 2010, and last year stood at 76 million.
The Housing and Construction Ministry has just transferred an additional five million Shekels from the public housing budget to further finance the Jewish enclaves in East Jerusalem, making the amount for 2011 81million shekels.
This high budget has prompted a court petition, filed by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, who oppose the use of private security guards to protect the settlers.
Israeli daily, Haaretz, reported that in the combined area of Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, Israel will lose its Jewish majority within the decade.
Currently there are 5.9million Jews and 5.6 million Palestinians, and by 2015 they will stand roughly equal at around 6.3 million. By 2020, the latest projections indicate that there will be 6.8 million Jews, less than the 7.2 million Palestinians.
These projections will surely have a negative impact on the Jewish Israeli psyche, and the Israeli government will surely exploit the news to legitimise its actions in East Jerusalem and its treatment of the Palestinians within and without its own borders.
That’s all for today from the IMEMC News, this was the Wednesday January 4th 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.
