from Maan News Agency

Palestinians and their international supporters held a vigil marking the 15th anniversary of the massacre of 33 Palestinians by an Israeli settler in the West Bank city of Hebron on Thursday.

The demonstration took place near the fence surrounding the present day settlement of Kiryat Arba. The families of the victims of the massacre were present, along with officials from the Palestinian People’s Party and foreign solidarity activists.

The demonstrators carried 33 banners with the names of the victims and lit 33 candles and carried torches.

In response to the vigil, Israeli soldiers declared the area a closed military zone, shutting down roads leading to the site of the demonstration, in the Wadi Al-Ihsein neighborhood of Hebron.

On 27 February 1994, … Continue reading

The Jerusalem Municipality appears determined to move forward with the demolition of 88 homes in the Al-Bustan neighborhood of Silwan, located near Occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City. According to a well-attended press conference this morning sponsored by The Civic Coalition for Defending the Palestinians’ Rights in Jerusalem, surveyors have descended on the neighborhood which often signals imminent demolition. When completed, up to 2,000 Palestinians will be uprooted from their homes.

The Municipality is following a vicious policy, where they use city planning to achieve military, political, and nationalistic goals. Palestinian communities are fragmented and then isolated through forced dispossession from their houses and land and, in other cases, the use of zoning and planning to restrict growth. A coordinated effort … Continue reading

Ma’an – An Israeli military tribunal has issued a decision that could pave the way for the expansion of the West Bank settlement of Efrat without informing a group of Palestinians who were petitioning to save their land.

In the ruling, a court in the settlement of Ofer rejected eight separate petitions, each representing dozens of Palestinians. The petitioners had objected to a 2004 declaration by the Israeli Civil Administration to designating some 1,700 dunums (1.7 square kilometers) of land north of Efrat “state land.”

The land at stake belongs to the Palestinian village of Artas, on the southern outskirts of Bethlehem. A catholic monastery is located just to the north of the land slated for confiscation.

If the Israeli Defense Ministry approves … Continue reading

Ma’an – A key Israeli government agency has been promoting plans to build thousands of new houses in illegal West Bank settlements, government documents made public on Friday show.

Documents from Israel’s Civil Administration, the government organ responsible for nonmilitary affairs in the occupied West Bank, were obtained by the organization B’Tselem through a Freedom of Information request.

The plans, developed over the last two years, were approved by the Environment Subcommittee of the Civil Administration’s planning wing and plot out a major expansion of the Gush Eztion settlement bloc. If realized the plan will cut a swath of the West Bank adjacent to the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, and annex it to the new settlement areas.

The initial construction would see … Continue reading

In the early hours on February 24th, Israeli Forces invaded the villages of Sa’ir and Idhna, in the Hebron district of the southern West Bank, and arrested four men. More than ten jeeps entered Idhna at approximately 12:30am. Around 40 soldiers surrounded the house of Hatem Mahmoud Al-Kharuf, and ordered all the family members outside. They then proceeded to search the house, turning everything upside down and smashing a bedroom wardrobe. A shared Taxi (service) owned by Hatem’s brother that was parked outside was also ransacked, with the soldiers tearing off large pieces of the interior and inexplicably breaking open the airbags. The taxi was just … Continue reading