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Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org for Thursday January 19th, 2012.
Seventy-six acres of land is to be confiscated just east of Bethlehem, and another illegal settlement outpost is dismantled in the West Bank, this time with injuries, these stories and more, coming up, so stay tuned.
During the eviction of an unauthorized settlement outpost Thursday morning, Israeli troops arrested three Israeli settlers who were protesting the eviction. During the clashes that resulted, six settlers and three Israeli police officers were slightly injured. The police were injured when they climbed onto the roof of a building to remove a settler who had barricaded himself there, and the roof collapsed.
Settlers claim the police used violence, against them including the use of tear gas canisters and batons, with the police claiming that the settlers hurled rocks at them and burned tires. Hours before the razing of the outpost, the Israeli security forces also took down a structure in the Oz Zion outpost, near Route 60. The police used stun-grenades against the settlers, after the protesters threw stones at them.
Yisa Bracha was an outpost made up of six structures, next to the Mitzpeh Yeriho settlement in the eastern West Bank, near the Palestinian city of Jericho.
In other news, The Arabs48 news website has reported that three Arab students, studying at the Engineering Academy in Jerusalem, have received police warrants exiling them from the city for seven days after they called for a boycott of a speech by Israeli President, Shimon Peres.
Two of the three students have been named as Khalil Gharra from Jit, Rafat Shaban from Majd Al Koroum. Their lawyer has stated that all student groups have the right to express their opinions by calling for the boycott of any program or official.
In Gaza, the Israeli army fired several shells at farmlands in Beit Hanoun, in the northern part of the Gaza strip, with eyewitnesses stating that Israeli tanks fired at farmland near the Agricultural College, no injuries were reported.
Back in the West Bank, Palestinian families were shocked by the decision to confiscate seventy-six acres of land to the benefit of the Jerusalem Municipality. The land lies behind the Annexation Wall in al-Khass village, in the eastern part of the West Bank city of Bethlehem.
The Israeli court claimed that the decision was made because these lands are under the custody of the Absentee Properties Guard, but the head of the village council, Khader Hamdan, stated that the council, in coordination with Settlement Affairs Ministry, has assigned the case to the ministry’s lawyer to solve the problem and appeal the illegal decision.
That’s all for today from the IMEMC News, this was the Thursday January 19th 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.
