Temporary Injunction against New Building in Palestinian Village Destroyed in 1948
By Tania Kepler for the Alternative Information Center | 08 March 2011
An Israeli court has issued a temporary injunction on selling luxury lots on the site of the historic Palestinian village of Lifta, whose residents were expelled and forced out in 1948.
Israeli Judge Yigal Marzel issued a temporary injunction on Monday (7 March) ordering the Israel Land Administration to freeze publication of the results of a tender to lease plots for building in the historic Palestinian village of Lifta.
The tender was issued following the Jerusalem Municipality approval of construction of 268 housing units, one hotel and a number of community institutions on the site of the ancient Palestinian village, the residents of which were expelled in 1948.
The petition to save Lifta was submitted on Sunday by Attorney Sami Arshid on behalf of Jerusalem activists, including descendents of Lifta, the Bnei Lifta Association, Rabbis for Human Rights and the Jafra Association.
According to the petitioners, “in the given situation and according to which the village of Lifta is an abandoned village and its original inhabitants live as refugees at a distance of only a few hundred metres from their village, it would have been befitting to abstain from all construction in the area and certainly to prevent building that would result in destruction of the village and the complete dispossession of the rights of the original inhabitants of the place”.
The petitioners further write that the “marketing of plots for building in the village of Lifta and furthermore the construction of new buildings on the village lands and in place of the existing village could thwart the ability to preserve the existing village and foil any possibility of reconstructing the historic structure of the village, and everything that is derived from this.”
Before the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, more than 3,000 Palestinians lived in Lifta, but the village was depopulated during the 1948 war and partially destroyed. It is one of the few of the 500 villages that had not been completely destroyed by Israeli forces in the time since.
The AIC spoke with Meir Margalit, a member of the Jerusalem Municipal Council, about the situation in Lifta. He told the AIC, “I am extremely fearful that Lifta will eventually turn into an exclusive neighborhood, similar to neighborhoods such as Mamilla and other places where flats were sold to Jews from France and New York. I fear that Lifta will be a ghost neighborhood.”
Numerous organisations, especially BIMKOM, Zochrot and FAST have lobbied for the village to be listed by UNESCO as a heritage site, as a symbol of reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis, and for alternative plans they have formulated with the Land and Housing Research Centre.
Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine in 2005 placed an advertisement in the Times, signed by over 350 architects and planners worldwide, many of them eminent figures including academics, to help save Lifta for its original Palestinian inhabitants.
Esther Zandberg in Haaretz has again written a moving plea for the village to be symbolically returned to those who were forcibly removed from there, instead of building 212 luxury apartments that will be bought only by Jewish people, in the proposed decade-long project (plan number 6036) that the Israel Land Administration wishes now to commence.
According to a press release from the Coalition to Save Lifta, the court petitioners have requested that the court order an annulment of the tender to sell plots in Lifta and order the Israel Land Administration to desist from any action that would damage the physical and cultural heritage of the place, until an inclusive planning process is completed that includes the area of Lifta. This would ultimately include planning for preservation of the site in accordance with professional standards and with public participation.
“There are 37 Lifta refugees in East Jerusalem and Ramallah, and we have a Lifta Association; and now the internet makes it possible to keep in touch with those that have moved further away,” said Yakub Odeh, a Lifta refugee.
“We all want to return to our village. I’m sure we can achieve our dream through peaceful means….We will never give in. They say that every human being is born in the land, but for us Palestinians, our land is born in us.”
Roger Waters: My Journey to BDS
By Roger Waters | AIC | March 7, 2011
In 1980, a song I wrote, “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2,” was banned by the government of South Africa because it was being used by Black South African children to advocate their right to equal education. That apartheid government imposed a cultural blockade, so-to-speak, on certain songs, including mine.
Twenty-five years later, in 2005, Palestinian children participating in a West Bank festival used the song to protest Israel’s apartheid wall. They sang “We don’t need no occupation! We don’t need no racist wall!” At the time, I hadn’t seen first-hand what they were singing about.
A year later in 2006, I contracted to perform in Tel Aviv.
Palestinians from the movement advocating an academic and cultural boycott of Israel urged me to reconsider. I had already spoken out against the wall, but I was unsure whether a cultural boycott was the right way to go. The Palestinian advocates of a boycott asked that I visit the occupied Palestinian territory, to see the Wall for myself before I made up my mind. I agreed.
Under the protection of the UN I visited Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw that day. The Wall is an appalling edifice to behold. It is policed by young Israeli Soldiers who treated me, a casual observer from another world with disdainful aggression. If it could be like that for me, a foreigner, a visitor, imagine what it must be like for the Palestinians, for the underclass, for the passbook carriers. I knew then that my conscience would not allow me to walk away from that Wall, from the fate of the Palestinians I met, people whose lives are crushed daily in a multitude of ways by Israel’s occupation. In solidarity, and somewhat impotently, I wrote on their wall that day: “We don’t need no thought control.”
Realizing at that point that my presence on a Tel Aviv stage would inadvertently legitimize the oppression I was witnessing, I canceled my gig at the football stadium in Tel Aviv and moved it to Neve Shalom an agricultural community devoted to growing chick peas and also, admirably, to cooperation between people of different faiths, where Muslim, Christian and Jew live and work side by side in harmony.
Against all expectations, it was to become the biggest music event in the short history of Israel. 60,000 fans battled traffic jams to attend. It was extraordinarily moving for me and my band, and at the end of the gig I was moved to exhort the young people gathered there to demand of their government that they attempt to make peace with their neighbors and respect the civil rights of Palestinians living in Israel.
Sadly in the intervening years, the Israeli government has made no attempt to implement legislation that would grant civil rights to Israeli Arabs equal to those enjoyed by Israeli Jews, and The Wall has grown, inexorably, illegally annexing more and more of The West Bank.
I had learned that day in Bethlehem in 2006 something of what it means to live under occupation, imprisoned behind a Wall. It means that a Palestinian farmer must watch olive groves centuries old, uprooted. It means that a Palestinian student cannot get to school because the checkpoint is closed. It means a woman may give birth in a car, because the soldier won’t let her pass to the hospital that’s a ten minute drive away. It means a Palestinian artist cannot travel abroad to exhibit work, or to show a film in an international film festival.
For the people of Gaza, locked in a virtual prison behind the wall of Israel’s illegal blockade, it means another set of injustices. It means that children go to sleep hungry, many chronically malnourished. It means that fathers and mothers, unable to work in a decimated economy, have no means to support their families. It means that university students with scholarships to study abroad must watch the opportunity of a lifetime slip away because they are not allowed travel.
In my view, the abhorrent and draconian control that Israel wields over the besieged Palestinians in Gaza, and the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem), coupled with its denial of the rights of refugees to return to their homes in Israel, demands that fair minded people around the world support the Palestinians in their civil, nonviolent resistance.
Where governments refuse to act, people must, with whatever peaceful means are at their disposal. For some that meant joining the Gaza Freedom March, for others it meant joining the humanitarian flotilla that tried to bring much needed humanitarian aid to Gaza.
For me it means declaring my intention to stand in solidarity, not only with the people of Palestine, but also with the many thousands of Israelis who disagree with their governments racist and colonial policies, by joining a campaign of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, until it satisfies three basic human rights demanded in international law.
1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands [occupied since 1967] and dismantling the Wall;
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.
My conviction is born in the idea that all people deserve basic human rights. My position is not anti Semitic. This is not an attack on the people of Israel. This is, however, a plea to my colleagues in the music industry, and also to artists in other disciplines, to join this cultural boycott.
Artists were right to refuse to play in South Africa’s Sun City resort until apartheid fell and whites and blacks enjoyed equal rights. And we are right to refuse to play in Israel until the day comes — and it surely will come — when The Wall of occupation falls and Palestinians live alongside Israelis in the peace, freedom, justice and dignity that they all deserve.
Khirbet Tana Water Confiscated By Israeli Army
By David Steele – International Middle East Media Center Editorial Group – IMEMC – March 7, 2011
The Ma’an News Agency reports that Israel has continued its campaign against Khirbet Tana by confiscating 20 portable water tankers on Monday morning.
The tankers were brought into the village after Israeli military forces blocked the village’s wells during a demolition. Khirbet Tana has been demolished six times recently. According to Ma’an, a group of military jeeps entered the village and removed all of the water carriers. These were used to provide drinking water for both residents and animals.
Israel has classified the land occupied by the village as ‘state land’ and refuses to issue building permits for the villagers. After a recent demolition, the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory, Maxwell Gaylard, issued a statement condemning “the demolition of temporary tented structures sheltering families from the weather in Khirbet Tana”.
In a visit to the area, Gaylard noted that “under international law, Israel, as the occupying power in the oPt, is prohibited from destroying property belonging to individuals or communities except when absolutely required by military operations”. In 2010, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) noted at least 350 demolished structures in Area C.
Notice to evacuate 15 Jersulem apartments
Ma’an – 07/03/2011
JERUSALEM — Israeli police and Jerusalem municipality workers handed out 15 eviction notices on Sunday afternoon, affecting families in the Ar-Rashid building of East Jerusalem’s Beit Hanina neighborhood.
Residents were told to be out of their homes within 10 days, neighborhood officials said, before the home would be demolished.
Apartment owners Fakhri Haj Muhammad Al-Laftawi and Mussa Al-Qawasmi told the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights on Monday that the building was home to 150 men, women and children.
They said the building was built in 1997, and lawyers were still working to get it permits. The Jerusalem center said the process was begun before construction commenced. Lawyers for the families said they were trying to convert the demolition orders into a fine, which would allow residents more time to appeal the decision, and seek retroactive permits for the property.
A representative of the Israeli-run municipality of Jerusalem could not be reached for comment by phone.
Israeli troops fire on women marking International Women’s Day, serious injuries reported
Stun grenade fired at woman’s face
Ma’an – March 6, 2011
RAMALLAH — Israeli forces violently shut down a demonstration led by women north of Jerusalem on Saturday, organizers said.
Border police fired tear gas and rubber-coated bullets at the protesters marking International Women’s Day at the Qalandiya checkpoint.
The event was organized by minister of social affairs Majeda Al-Masri, a leader in the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and union officials from Hebron and Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
It was not clear how many people were hurt, but union official Nehad Al-Akhras said a Swedish activist was seriously injured by a stun grenade which struck her in the face. She was hospitalized in Ramallah.
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Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association
Join us in calling for the immediate release of all Palestinian women political prisoners.
Petition: We, the undersigned members of worldwide civil society, are marking International Women’s Day on 8 March 2011 by calling on the Israeli authorities to immediately release all Palestinian women political prisoners and detainees from Israeli jails, including women in administrative detention. We condemn the cruel and discriminatory treatment that Palestinian women prisoners and detainees are subjected to during their arrest and interrogation and in prison, including sexual harassment, psychological and physical punishment and humiliation, and deprivation of gender-sensitive healthcare. This is in contravention of international law and must stop immediately.
To sign the petition, please go here.
17 years after Goldstein massacre, Hebron city center paralyzed
B’Tselem | March 3, 2011
Zlikhah Muhtasab, 49, is one of the few Palestinians still living on Shuhada Street in the center of Hebron. The street, one of Hebron ‘s main thoroughfares, links the north and south of the city and passes by the major markets, the Old City , the Tomb of the Patriarchs and al-Haram al-Ibrahimi, and Israeli settlement compounds. Since October 2000, Israel has forbidden Palestinians to walk or drive on the street, although no valid military order for the closure has been presented. Along with other restrictions on Palestinian movement in the area, this has led to an economic collapse of the city center. Many residents have left, and the area has become a ghost town. Over the years, the army repeatedly claimed it was about to permit Palestinians to use the street again, but this has yet to occur.
Israeli settlers, however, are allowed to move freely on the street. In a testimony she gave to B’Tselem, Zlikhah related the harassment she and her 75-year-old mother have suffered since they moved, for financial reasons, to a house on the largely deserted street in 2006. In the first year, settlers regularly threw stones at the house. After Zlikhah came home one day to discover a large amount of stones within the house, she asked the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee to assist her in installing iron grating on the windows and porches of the house for protection. The grating, which gives the house a cage-like appearance, did not assist in deterring assaults, and settlers continue to throw stones at the house from time to time, even at night.
Zlikhah Muhtasab in her cage-like house. Photo: Musa Abu Hashhash, B’Tselem, 13 Feb. ’11.
Israel began to restrict Palestinian movement along the street in 1994. After the massacre carried out by Baruch Goldstein in the Tomb of the Patriarchs that year, Israel chose to impose restrictions on the Palestinians, rather than on the Israeli settlers in the city, contending that these restrictions were necessary in order to protect the settlers’ safety. At first, Israel forbade Palestinian commerce and vehicle traffic on part of the Shuhada Street , and only residents of the street were allowed to enter by vehicle. Under the Hebron Agreement, signed in January 1997, control of a large part of the city, referred to as Area H1, was transferred to the Palestinian Authority. The section of the city in which Israeli settlements had been established, termed H2, remained under Israeli control. The parties agreed that Israel would once again allow Palestinian vehicle traffic on Shuhada Street , in area H2. For several years, until the beginning of the second intifada, the forbidden section of the street was alternately opened and closed.
When the second intifada broke out, in October 2000, the army placed more stringent restrictions on movement on the street. Now, Palestinians are forbidden to drive along the entire length of the street, and even to walk along the section between the Avraham Avinu settlement compound and the Bet Hadassah settlement compound. The army also prohibits Palestinian traffic on adjacent streets, thereby creating a contiguous strip of land in the center of Hebron , from the Kiryat Arba settlement in the east to the Jewish cemetery in the west, in which Palestinian vehicles are completely forbidden.
As a result of these severe restrictions, 304 shops and warehouses along Shuhada Street closed down, and Palestinian municipal and governmental offices that had been on the street were relocated to Area H1. Israel also took control of the central bus station that had been on the street, turning it into an army base. In 2006, B’Tselem’s investigation revealed that most of the properties on or adjacent to Shuhada Street , including homes and businesses, had been abandoned or had been closed by military order. The army forces the few Palestinian families that continue to live on the street to enter their homes via side entrances, since they are not allowed to use the main entrances on Shuhada Street . Where side entrances are not available, the Palestinian residents have no choice but to climb on ladders leading to the roofs of the buildings.
Closed shops on Shuhada St. Photo: Tamar Gonen , B’Tselem, 2 March ’11.
Like other residents still living on the street, Zlikhah and her mother are also forced to enter and leave their home by climbing a steep flight of stairs that serves as a side entrance. As they are forbidden to walk on the main street, they must take circuitous routes and go through two checkpoints in order to reach the mosque of al-Haram al-Ibrahimi (the Tomb of the Patriarchs) or to visit relatives who live nearby. Zlikhah’s elderly mother has to walk almost a kilometer to reach her medical clinic, only 300 meters away if she could go via Shuhada Street . The cemetery in which Zlikhah’s grandfather and other relatives are buried lies right across the street, but the two have great difficulty visiting it now.
In April 2007, following reports in the Israeli media and public pressure on the issue, the Civil Administration began to issue temporary permits to some Palestinians living on the street. These permits enabled them to enter and leave their houses via the main entrance on the street. Visitors were still denied use of these entrances. The permits were valid for three months, and were extended four times. During this period, Zlikhah, her mother, and their neighbors returned to using the front entrances to their homes and to walking freely on Shuhada Street.
Zlikhah told B’Tselem of the relief she felt and how she would often go out to walk on the street, sometimes at night too, in order to realize her newly returned freedom. She noted that soldiers posted on the street fulfilled their duty to protect Palestinians who were now using the street again, and that settlers in the area were displeased with the development.
The last permit given to Zlikhah expired in August 2008. She related that when she and her neighbors applied to renew the permits again, the Civil Administration said the requests would be handled after the Jewish holidays. Then the Civil Administration dragged its feet, and repeatedly postponed renewing the permits, until the communication ceased altogether. The Palestinian residents of the street had to return to using side entrances or rooftops.
In 2005, the Hebron Municipality and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel petitioned Israel ‘s High Court of Justice to open the street to Palestinian movement. The state, in response, presented a “plan for protection of the Jewish community in Hebron ,” according to which Palestinians would be allowed to walk on the street, but the prohibition on opening shops and on vehicular traffic on the street would remain in force. Subsequently, military orders were issued restricting vehicular traffic on the street but not pedestrians.
Following this, ACRI wrote to the legal advisor for Judea and Samaria , who stated, in December 2006, that the army had prohibited Palestinians from walking along the street for six years “by mistake.” This contention was clearly a lie. In any event, the army continued to prevent Palestinian pedestrians from using the street. In response to a request ACRI made to the judge advocate general, the latter raised a new argument, whereby the army maintains that the street should remain closed “for security reasons,” without delineating the reasons. Two years ago, the army informed the media that it intended to cancel the prohibition on Palestinian movement on Shuhada Street . To this day, the prohibition remains in force.
The closing of Shuhada Street is part of the policy of separation that Israel imposes in the heart of Hebron. This policy has led to Palestinian mass abandonment of the city center and has brought with it severe, continuing breach of the human rights of Palestinians. It is, de facto, an unacceptable regime of discriminatory separation.
February: Seven Palestinians Killed, 46 Injured By Army Fire In Gaza
By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies – March 03, 2011
A report published by the Higher Committee for Medical Services in Gaza, revealed that Israeli soldiers killed, in February, 7 Palestinians, and wounded 46, including several children, during several attacks targeting the Gaza Strip in February.
Committee Spokesperson, Adham Abu Salmiyya, stated that the Israeli Air Force bombarded at least 15 targets in Gaza, including a storehouse for medicines that belong to the Ministry of Health, east of Gaza City.
He also stated that three fishermen were killed by Israeli Navy fire near Beit Lahia, and that one worker, collecting debris to be recycled and used in construction, was also killed and eighteen other workers were wounded.
The number of Palestinian workers who were killed by the army in Gaza since March 2010 now stands at six, while 132 were wounded.
Abu Salmiyya said that two of the slain residents and eleven of the wounded were targeted by Israeli artillery shells, and 18 were injured during aerial strikes carried out by the Israeli Air Force.
Two residents were wounded when an ordnance dropped by the army in previous invasions and attacks detonated near them.
In December of 2010, Israeli soldiers killed seven Palestinians, including two children, and wounded more than twenty resident.
Israeli bulldozers demolish Khirbet Tana
Ma’an – 02/03/2011
NABLUS — A herder village east of Nablus was demolished by Israel’s Civil Administration for the sixth time on Wednesday, a Palestinian official confirmed.
Early Wednesday morning, 13 Israeli patrol cars and three military bulldozers arrived in the hamlet of Khirbet Tana, and demolished the tents and sheds recently re-built by residents, Ghassan Doughlas, the Fatah official charged with monitoring settlement activity in the northern West Bank, told Ma’an.
According to AFP, there were 20 structures taken down.
On a recent visit to the hamlet, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Maxwell Gaylard said of the fourth demolition, that “under international law, Israel, as the occupying power in the oPt [occupied Palestinian territories], is prohibited from destroying property belonging to individuals or communities except when absolutely required by military operations.”
Gaylard had condemned the demolition, saying “if the authorities ultimately responsible for these demolitions could see the devastating impact on vulnerable Palestinian communities, they might reflect upon the inhumanity of their actions.”
On the occasion of the sixth demolition, Doughlas said he considered the act a “clear assault on Palestinian citizens’ rights,” and noted the families living in the hamlet, who subsist on herding livestock and animal husbandry, were determined to “rebuild what was demolished.”
Khirbet Tana is one of two Bedouin hamlets that have been targeted over the past months, with a second south of Hebron, Amniyr, demolished in mid-February. In both cases, residents have been herding in the area for years, and say they have nowhere else to go. In the case of Amniyr, residents said settler harassment had driven them from all other traditional grazing grounds.
On Feb. 9, 17 and 20, tents donated to residents of Khirbet Tana by the International Red Cross and the Palestinian Authority were destroyed by Israeli forces.
A representative of Israel’s Civil Administration said that the Feb. 17 demolitions were a part of “routine law enforcement activity against illegal building,” and confirmed that approximately 19 buildings were destroyed.
The Civil Administration could not be immediately reached for comment on the latest demolition on Wednesday.
Israel shuts down Jerusalem event
Ma’an – 01/03/2011
JERUSALEM — Israeli police and intelligence agents forcibly shut down two events in East Jerusalem on Tuesday morning, citing “security reasons” for the clampdown.
Armed police and border guards prevented guests from entering a conference on “Defending Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem” at the Capitol Hotel on Salah Addin Street in Jerusalem, organizers said.
Police handed organizers a warrant signed by minister of internal security Yitzhaq Ahronovitch addressed to the hotel administration. The warrant warned that the meeting was banned for “security reasons.”
According to organizers, the one-day event was a conference and workshop for Palestinian Authority officials, leaders of non-profit organizations, and political officials. Agenda items included ways to protect residents of the Silwan from evictions and demotions.
Head of the coalition for defending Palestinians’ rights in Jerusalem Zakariyya Udah told Ma’an that police confiscated ID cards of all who attended the conference and took down their numbers before informing the hotel the conference was prohibited.
On Monday night, a similar order signed by the minister of internal security was delivered to organizers of a conference scheduled for the following day. The event was slated for the Al-Bustan protest tent in Silwan, where organizers were preparing to announce the establishment of a new youth union in Jerusalem.
The order was delivered when a unit of armed border guards and police entered the home of the conference organizer in Silwan, warning him of “legal consequences” if the event went ahead.
Israel bars ICRC aid from reaching homeless Bedouin
Ma’an – 23/02/2011
HEBRON — Residents of the tiny Bedouin hamlet of Amniyr crowded into a small cave in the rocky hills south of Hebron to sleep on Wednesday night, after their tent homes were destroyed by Israeli demolition crews claiming the hamlet as state land.
Village elder Hajj Mahmoud said the three families that live in the area spent the day in the open air, trying to salvage items from the buried heaps left by Israeli demolition crews.
Hajj Mahmoud said the International Committee for the Red Cross had attempted to deliver aid and supplies, after calls from residents and observers from the Christian Peacemaker Teams to provide new shelters.
The elder said he was unsure what the ICRC had brought, however, because Israeli troops prevented ICRC crews from unloading the supplies.
An informed official in Hebron confirmed to Ma’an that the ICRC encountered difficulties delivering the supplies, which were sent back.
An attempt was made to deliver several housing kits, food and blankets to the families, the official said, adding that it was the first time such a delivery had been barred.
“We stayed out in the air until late,” Hajj Mahmoud said, explaining that the families retired to a small cave.
“We found a snake inside the cave, we had to kill it before we slept.”
The five tent shelters, a cistern and water well were buried on Monday, and olive trees uprooted then covered with earth.
Residents had moved back to the area during the winter, saying settler harassment at a second location one kilometer away had driven them out. Years earlier the same harassment had forced them from the location where the tents were demolished.
Ownership papers for the land existed at one point, residents said, but according to the CPT observer every week for the past month Israeli officials from the Civil Administration have delivered notices saying the community was living on state land and must evacuate.
On Tuesday morning, CPT observers published a video of the destruction in the hamlet, and issued a release saying teams would continue to have a presence in the area.
Israeli fire injures 13 Palestinians
Press TV – February 23, 2011
At least thirteen Palestinians, including children, have been injured in two separate Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip, medics say.
The incident took place during a brief incursion by Israeli forces into eastern Gaza City on Wednesday, a Press TV correspondent reported.
Eleven Palestinians were injured after an Israeli tank shell hit eastern part of the Gaza City.
The incident came shortly after a number of Israeli tanks and bulldozers rolled into the Palestinian territory in an apparent effort to destroy agricultural lands along the occupied border zone.
Three members of the Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, and three children are among the injured.
“Three of our fighters were injured while firing two mortar shells towards Israeli tanks which were operating inside the (Gaza) border,” a statement released by the group said.
Some of the injured are reported to be in critical condition, Gaza emergency services Chief Adham Abu Selmeya said, adding that they had been taken to the city’s Shifa hospital.
Separately, two Palestinian workers were shot and injured by Israeli gunfire as they were collecting cement particles left behind from the houses that were destroyed in north of the town of Beit Lahiya near the border during the Israeli war on Gaza at the turn of 2009.
Due to a crippling Israeli blockade, Palestinians living in Gaza have no other choice but to obtain the required material for construction work from other buildings that have been destroyed in Israeli attacks.
Since March 2010, more than one hundred Palestinians have been shot by Israeli soldiers while collecting construction material.
Israel laid an economic siege on the Gaza Strip in June 2007 after Hamas took control of the enclave.
The Israeli-imposed blockade has had a disastrous impact on the humanitarian and economic situation in the Gaza Strip.
Some 1.5 million people are being denied their basic rights, including freedom of movement, and their rights to appropriate living conditions, work, health and education. Poverty and unemployment rates stand at approximately 80 percent and 60 percent, respectively, in the Gaza Strip.
More than 1,400 Palestinians were killed during the three-week Israeli land, sea and air offensive in the impoverished coastal sliver during the winter of 2008-2009. The offensive also inflicted $ 1.6 billion damage to the Gazan economy.
A United Nations inquiry led by the former South African judge, Richard Goldstone, detailed what investigators called Israeli actions “amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity,” during Israel’s offensive against the Gaza Strip.
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Iran UN ambassador calls for destruction of all nuclear weapons
Iran’s ambassador to the UN Gholamali Khoshroo
Press TV – March 29, 2017
Iran’s ambassador to the UN Gholamali Khoshroo has called for the total eradication of nuclear weapons.
Khoshroo reiterated Iran’s call during a UN conference aimed at creating a nuclear weapons ban treaty in New York on Tuesday.
“Iran, as a victim of chemical weapons, strongly feels the danger posed by the existence of weapons of mass destruction and is determined to engage actively in international diplomatic efforts to save humanity from the menace of nuclear weapons,” he said.
Khoshroo stressed that Iran is committed to its Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations, which include negotiations based on effective nuclear disarmament measures.
He added that several countries continue to ignore international calls and treaties for nuclear disarmament and even continue to increase their nuclear stockpiles. “They do not have political determination to abandon doctrines of nuclear deterrence and nuclear terror,” he went on to say.
Iran’s UN ambassador noted that boycotting the talks by many countries, including the US, shows that the world’s nuclear powers are by no means committed to the eradication of nuclear arms. Britain and France were also among the some 40 countries that did not join the talks.
“We note that prohibition of nuclear weapons must be accompanied by the elimination of such weapons. There can be no doubt that without complete abolition of nuclear weapons, there will be no absolute guarantee against the danger of nuclear war and the use of such weapons,” Khoshroo added.
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