Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, for Wednesday, June 29, 2016.
Israeli navy targets Palestinian fishermen in Gaza meanwhile army bulldozers destroy a Bedouin village in the Negev for 100 times. These stories, and more, coming up, stay tuned.
Egypt opened the Rafah border crossing between Egypt’s Sinai and the Palestinian Gaza Strip on Wednesday and Thursday to allow stranded Palestinians and Egyptians to cross the border.
Egyptian authorities responded to directives from President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi who decided to open the Rafah border crossing.
Rafah crossing was closed in 2006 by Egypt when Hamas movement took control of the Gaza Strip and ousted Palestinian President forces from the coastal enclave.
Since then It opened the crossing few days a year. Rafah crossing is the only way for Palestinians to travel in or out of the Gaza strip.
Staying in Gaza, Israeli navy ships opened fire on a number of Palestinian fishing boats, in Palestinian territorial waters, in Beit Lahia, in the northern part of the coastal region. Damage was reported but no injuries.
In other news, Israeli bulldozers demolished homes in the Bedouin village of al-Araqib, in the Negev desert, for the 100 time on Wednesday, in addition to a home in the Negev village of Atir, local activists said.
Israeli police reportedly imposed a blockade on al-Araqib before carrying out the demolitions. Demolitions, in addition to denial of basic services and access to infrastructure, are part of an ongoing campaign by Israeli planning committees against Bedouin villages in the Negev desert, where roughly 70-90,000 people live.
Moreover, Israeli land confiscation policy has notably escalated in occupied Jerusalem and West Bank by 439% since the beginning of 2016, in comparison to last year, a Palestinian report revealed on Wednesday.
Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem (ARIJ) revealed that Israeli authorities confiscated, since the beginning of the year, 7,773 acres of Palestinian-owned lands, recording an increase by 439% in comparison with last year, where 1,442 acres were seized.
Elsewhere, Israeli soldiers kidnapped, Wednesday, two Palestinian siblings from their home in the al-‘Isawiyya town, in occupied Jerusalem. Media sources in Jerusalem said the soldiers kidnapped Ahmad Tarwa, and his brother Yazan, after storming their family’s home, and violently searching it.
The kidnapped siblings were cuffed and blindfolded before the soldiers moved them to an interrogation facility in the city.
And that’s all for today from the IMEMC News; this was the Wednesday, June 29, 2016, news round-up from the Occupied Palestinian Territories. From 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 Ghassan Bannoura.
