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Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org for Tuesday January 17th, 2012.
Two Palestinians are arrested at a checkpoint after being found carrying pipe bombs, and Abbas continues his European tour by meeting in Berlin, these stories and more, coming up, so stay tuned.
Israeli soldiers invaded the village of Azzoun, east of the northern West Bank city of Qalqilia. The Palestinian Prisoner Society has identified the twelve men who were arrested, including the four men who were soon released. The PPS in Qalqilia denounced the Israeli incursion and for the Israeli militaries recent actions of arresting children and former detainees.
In similar news, the Israeli army made an incursion into the Jenin refugee camp, before moving into the city itself and arresting Jamal Mahdi.
Two more Palestinians men, both aged 20, were arrested at a checkpoint leading away from the city of Jenin. Israeli daily, Haaretz, has reported that after searching the hand-hold bags of the two men in question, they discovered ten pipe bombs, a make-shift hand gun, and numerous bullets.
Israeli security forces believe that the two were linked to an arrest last week of a man carrying pipe bombs, and they believe both were intending to target the military court near the Salem checkpoint.
In other news, Amjad Awad, a nineteen year old student who confessed to the murders of the Fogel family has been sentenced to five consecutive life terms. The brutal attack carried out in the illegal settlement of Itmar in March, the victims included both parents, Ehud and Ruth Fogel, along with their three children, Yoav, Elad, and Hadas, aged 11 years, 4 years, and 3 months old.
His cousin was convicted of a similar sentence in September, and though both were linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Israeli investigators affirmed that they planned and acted independently of any group.
Ninety Israeli children have been killed since 2002 by Palestinian fighters, along with over 1,000 Palestinian children, and Palestinian officials condemned the attack, stating unequivocally that attacks on Israeli civilians are never acceptable.
In a tour of Europe by Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, has led British Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, to publicly call settlements “deliberate vandalism”. Both he and the Prime Minister, David Cameron, stated that settlement expansion and construction was counter-productive to the peace process, and that time was beginning to run out for a two state solution, as “the facts on the ground will make it more and more difficult, which is why the settlement issue remains so important.’ .
President Abbas is in Berlin today for two days, meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and will proceed to Moscow on Thursday 19th to meet the Russian President, Dmitri Medvedev. The tour is to discuss the exploratory talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators currently underway in Amman.
That’s all for today from the IMEMC News, this was the Tuesday January 17th daily roundup of news from the Occupied Palestinian Territories. We hope you will join us again tomorrow. This has been brought to you by Husam Qassis, and me, William Gibson.
