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Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, for Wednesday April 24, 2013.
Two Palestinians injured in the West Bank by army gunfire and in Gaza the Israeli navy attack Palestinian fishermen. These stories, and more, coming up, stay tuned.
The Israeli army shot and wounded two Palestinian youths near a “security fence” close to Jenin city, in the northern part of the occupied West Bank. The army alleges that the two Palestinians intended to “infiltrate into Israel”, but did not provide additional information except the fact that they were unarmed.
Israeli medical sources reported that one of the wounded suffered serious injuries and was moved to an Israeli hospital in Al-Affoula, while the second who apparently suffered minor injuries was kidnapped by the army, and was taken to an unknown destination.
The harsh economic situation in the occupied territories pushes thousands of Palestinians to seek work in Israel, but the majority of them are not granted work permits an issue that pushes them to seek alternative means to enter Israel.
Elsewhere Israeli bulldozers of the Jerusalem City Council, accompanied by Israeli soldiers and police officers, demolished three vacant brand new apartments in the At-Tour town in occupied East Jerusalem.
The Jerusalem municipality claimed that the apartments have been built without construction permits. Each apartment is 500 square meters. Owner of the building Kayed Jaradat, told local news that this is the third attack of its kind, and added that his family has been living in their old home, connected to the demolished apartments, since 1997.
in related news, the army demolished two homes under-construction in Shiokh Al-Arroub town, north of the southern West Bank city of Hebron.
In the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, Israeli Navy boats opened fire at a number of Palestinian fishing boats at the Gaza coast, an issue that forced them back to the shore without being able to fish. Eyewitnesses said that the Navy fire dozens of live rounds into the air and a few rounds at the fishing boats while the fishermen were in the three nautical miles allotted to them by Israel.
Under the Oslo accords in the mid-nineties, the Palestinians are allowed to fish in 20 nautical miles off the Gaza shore, but in 2008, Israel unilaterally reduced the fishing area to three nautical miles.
As part of the ceasefire agreement that ended the Israeli war on Gaza in November 2012, Palestinian fishermen were allowed to fish within six nautical miles off the Gaza coast, but the army continued to attack them in their allotted areas.
And that’s all for today from the IMEMC News; this was the Wednesday April 24th news round-up from the Occupied Palestinian Territories. For more news and updates please visit our website at www.imemc.org. Today’s report has been brought to you by Hussam Qassis and me, Ghassan Bannoura.
