Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, for Monday, August, 8, 2016.
Israeli troops kidnapped more than a dozen civilians during dawn invasions and prevent hunger striking political detainees from meeting family members and lawyers. These stories and more coming up stay tuned.
The Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) has reported, Monday, that the administration in Gilboa’ Israeli prison prevented 35 hunger striking detainees from meeting their lawyers, as a form of illegal collective punishment.
The detainees are striking in solidarity with detainee Bilal Kayed who launched a hunger strike 55 days ago protesting being held under arbitrary Administrative Detention orders, without charges, after he served a prison sentence of 14.5 years.
Moreover, Israeli soldiers prevented twelve Palestinian families, from the West Bank district of Bethlehem, from heading to prisons to visit with their detained family members, and tore their permits.
The Palestinian Political Detainees’ Committee stated that the soldiers stopped the families at military roadblocks, and tore their permits, before forcing them back.
In related news, the Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) has reported that Israeli soldiers have kidnapped, overnight and at dawn Monday, eighteen Palestinians in different parts of the occupied West Bank, including nine in Hebron.
Elsewhere, The Israeli government and the Jerusalem City Council are advancing a plan to build 2,500 units in the Gilo colony, south of occupied East Jerusalem. Gilo was built on lands owned by Palestinians from Beit Jala, al-Walaja and Batteer in the West Bank district of Bethlehem.
The new construction plan, that enjoys the approval of the Jerusalem City Council, is being pushed by private developers, and targets around 200 dunams of privately-owned Palestinian lands, Isralei news sources reported on Monday.
Last month, the Israeli “Civil Administration”, approved the construction of 90 settlement units in Gilo settlement.
In the same month, the so-called “Israel Land Authority released tenders for the construction of 323 units in occupied Jerusalem.
According to the new plan, 130 housing units will be built in the Har Homa settlement on Abu Ghneim Mountain, east of Bethlehem, 89 others in Gilo settlement, to the south of Jerusalem, 68 in Pisgat Ze’ev and Neve Yaakov settlements, north of Jerusalem.
And that’s all for today from the IMEMC News; this was the Monday, August, 8, 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.
