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Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org for Tuesday July 9, 2013.
Israeli soldiers roll into the Gaza Strip, bulldoze land and uproot trees, in the meantime, a senior Hamas leader warns against interfering in Egyptian affairs, these stories and more, coming up, stay tuned.
Israeli authorities have taken action to shut down and censor two theaters – one Palestinian-run, and one Israeli – for performing cultural theater performances that Israel considers to be critical of its political agenda and policies.
The affected theaters are the El-Hakawati Puppet Theater in East Jerusalem, and the Khan Theater in West Jerusalem.
The Puppet Theater was scheduled to begin this summer with the 19th annual El-Hakawati Puppet Festival, but the Israeli minister of internal security, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, shut down the festival by claiming that Puppet Theater was connected with the Palestinian Authority. The theater owners vehemently deny that any of their funding came from the Palestinian Authority, and have opened their account books publicly to verify this fact.
A Palestinian security source in the Gaza Strip reported that a number of Israeli military vehicles advanced on Tuesday at dawn hundreds of meters into Al-Qarara town, northeast of Khan Younis city, in the southern Gaza Strip.
The source reported that six armored military bulldozers, accompanied by several armored vehicles, advanced into the area, and uprooted Palestinian farmland, especially land close to the enforced fence on the western side of the Gaza Strip. no clashes have been reported.
Despite the ceasefire agreement, mediated by Egypt last December, Israeli soldiers carried out hundreds of limited invasions into the coastal region, and continued their attacks against the residents, including fishermen and farmers.
In political news, Legislator Yahia Mousa of the Hamas movement, stated that Hamas and the Gaza Strip will pay a heavy price for interfering in internal Egyptian affairs, and called on his movement to reconsider its regional policies, especially with neighboring countries.
In an interview with the Wattan News Agency, Mousa said that Hamas, as an Islamist movement, supports the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, but does not have the right to interfere in internal Egyptian affairs. Instead, it must act to stop the bloodshed between the supporters of Mursi’s regime and their opponents.
He said that meddling into Egyptian affairs would affect the Palestinian people, especially in Gaza, and would lead to the closure of all siege-busting tunnels that have become virtually the only source of goods and supplies to the coastal region. Mousa called upon the Hamas leadership to reconsider its foreign policy, especially with Egypt.
And that’s all for today from the IMEMC News; this was the Thursday July 9th, 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 George Rishmawi and me, Shamus Slaunwhite.
