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Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, for Tuesday, May 12th, 2015.
Israeli soldiers raid West Bank communities kidnaping civilians and in Gaza troops targets farmers destroying crops. These stories, and more, coming up, stay tuned.
On Tuesday at dawn, Israeli soldiers kidnapped a Palestinian man, summoned two for interrogation, in the West Bank district of Bethlehem, a child in occupied Jerusalem, and a third Palestinian in Hebron. Two Palestinians kidnapped in Jerusalem, on Monday late at night.
In related news, Omar Shalabi, leader of the Fateh political party in East Jerusalem, was sentenced to nine months in prison Tuesday after being convicted of incitement and support of a terrorist organization through his Facebook postings. This is the first time that a person has been sentenced to jail for social media posts under Israeli law.
Shalabi, age 44 and the father of six children, was arrested in December and charged over ten postings on his Facebook page, which at the time had some 5,000 friends.
Later on Tuesday, Israeli intelligence teams, along with groups of extremist Israeli settlers have renewed raids on Al Aqsa Mosque, entering from the Mughrabi gate. The groups were heavily guarded by private units of the Israeli police throughout today’s provocative tour.
Security sources said that the Israeli intelligence officers have been going on regular trips in mosque facilities and yards, in order to obtain complete knowledge of the activities of Aqsa guardians (Murabiteen) and worshipers.
For their part, the worshipers have protested the raids by shouting slogans against the intrusions into the third holiest place in the religion of Islam.
In Gaza, Israeli forces opened fire at Palestinian farms in the eastern part of the Gaza Strip, burning a large amount of wheat crops.
No casualties were reported, as the farmers fled the region two days ago, after a limited Israeli incursion. Along the previous two weeks, Palestinian farmers, whose farms lie near the eastern borders of the Gaza Strip, have been reporting Israeli troops targeting them with heavy gunfire daily.
And that’s all for today from the IMEMC News; this was the Tuesday, May 12th, 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 George Rishmawi and Ghassan Bannoura.
