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Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center located online at www.imemc.org. Today’s news brief is for Wednesday, February 18, 2015. I’m Alexandra Halaby sitting in for Ghassan Bannoura.
Israeli soldiers, stationed on military towers across the border fence, opened fire on Tuesday evening, on Palestinian farmers and their lands in central Gaza.
Eyewitnesses said the soldiers fired rounds of live ammunition on the farmers, forcing them to leave; the attack caused no injuries.
The attack is part of repeated violations against the Palestinians and their lands, especially in areas close to the border, in addition to ongoing violations against the fishers in Palestinian territorial waters, and even while on shore.
On Tuesday morning, soldiers opened fire towards Palestinian shepherds near the cemetery in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, while Israeli gunboats targeted fishing boats in Khan Younis, on Monday at night, in Gaza’s southern region.
Israeli forces abducted, overnight, nine Palestinians and summoned two children from various West Bank districts, according to reports by security sources and a local activist. In Tayasir, Israeli forces reportedly uprooted dozens of Palestinian-owned olive trees.
Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, police stormed a house belonging to Arafat Abu Isbeitan in Jabal Al-Zeitoun’s al-Tur neighborhood overlooking the Old City, where they summoned two children.
Isbeitan was served with an order summoning his two children Muhammad, age 12, and Ibrahim, 10, to appear before Israeli intelligence in West Jerusalem.
Police officers stationed at Bab al-Nather, which leads to Al Aqsa Mosque compound, detained a Palestinian woman while she was exiting the compound. The woman remains unidentified.
The incident occurred just shortly after Palestinian Muslim women attempted to confront groups of extremist settlers who stormed the compound from the Mughrabi Gate.
In Bethlehem, Israeli forces kidnapped a Palestinian young man after breaking into and ransacking his house in the Jabal al-Mawalih neighborhood. The detainee was identified as Yahya Jado, 29.
A group of Jewish settlers, reportedly from the Metzad settlement, near Bethlehem, uprooted over 500 newly planted olive tree saplings on Wednesday, near Hebron.
The damaged fields belong to the al-Ayaydeh family, local activists said.
The owners found the damaged trees in the morning, while going out to check the land, which is near the Gush Etzion settlement bloc.
The Regional Construction and Planning Committee of the Jerusalem City Council approved, Wednesday, the establishment of a trash dump area on around 520 Dunams (or 128.49 Acres) of Palestinian lands.
The area is inhabited by Bedouins who will be removed and relocated, in addition to lands owned by the Palestinians in the area.
The Jerusalem City Council and Israel Land Authority set the plan that would be established near the old road that leads to Maale Adumim.
The Israeli Supreme Court, on Wednesday, overruled a ban on a member of the Knesset from Israel’s Palestinian community, as well as another on an extreme right-wing Jewish activist, from running in next month’s election, an official said.
Last month, Israel’s four Arab parties decided to fight the March 17 election as a single block. Haneen Zoabi is seventh on a united list, which opinion polls suggest could win between 10 and 13 seats in the 120-member Knesset.
Some 1.3 million Palestinian citizens live inside the official borders of Israel, and compose about 20 percent of the population.
They are the descendents of 160,000 people who remained on their land during the mass displacement of the remaining Palestinian population, during the creation of the Israeli state in 1948.
And yesterday the Undergraduate Senate of California’s Stanford University voted to pass a resolution to divest from the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
The resolution, entitled ‘A Resolution to Divest from Companies Violating Human Rights in Occupied Palestine’, calls on Stanford to stop investing in multinational corporations facilitating human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt).
And, that’s the latest news for today from the IMEMC News Center. This was the Wednesday, February 18, 2015, 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 Saed Bannoura, and me, Alexandra Halaby, sitting in for Ghassan Bannoura.
