LATEST figures show that 14 Palestinians, including four children, were killed and 1,434 injured by the Israeli forces during the demonstrations between September 23 and October 6th at the Gaza border with Israel, according to a special situation report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) issued yesterday.
The report also said that from the 30th of March – the start of the March of Return protests on the Gaza borders with Israel – until the 6th of October, 205 Palestinians were killed. Out of the total killed, 190 people were killed by Israeli forces during the demonstrations and 15 people killed during Israeli air and missile attacks.
It said out of the total 1,434 injured, 737 patients required transfer to hospitals or clinics, including 150 children and 32 females. Of the hospitalised injured, 12 cases were critically life threatening, 245 moderate, 453 mild and the remaining 27 were unspecified cases. In addition, said the WHO report, the total number of amputations during the entire period was 81, including 15 children and one female. Out of this total, 73 were lower limb amputations and eight upper limb amputations.
• Several suffocation cases were reported yesterday among Palestinians, including school students and women, during clashes which broke out with Israeli forces in the village of Kufr Nemeh, west of Ramallah. Israeli soldiers stormed the village of Kufr Nemeh amid the heavy firing of tear gas canisters towards the village school and medical clinic, provoking residents and leading to clashes.
Many Palestinians, including students and women, were treated for tear gas exposure. Meanwhile, clashes also erupted in the town of Abu Qash, north of Ramallah. However, no injuries were reported.
• Yesterday, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned Israel’s detention at Ben Gurion airport of an American student of Palestinian descent because of her views, describing the detention as ‘political terrorism’.
Lara al-Qassem, 22, arrived at the airport on Tuesday of last week with a one year student visa she obtained from the Israeli consulate in Florida to attend classes for a master’s degree at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. However, upon arrival at the airport, she was denied entry and held ‘because of boycott activity,’ according to the Israeli media.
Al-Qassem has remained detained at the airport ever since, awaiting a final court decision. Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan later said that he would reconsider al-Qassem’s entry if she publicly condemns the boycott of Israel. The Palestinian Foreign Ministry has condemned her detention at the airport and Erdan’s conditions as ‘cheap blackmail’.
‘The racism of the occupying state has reached the level of fascism in punishing, prosecuting and killing others because of their ideas and beliefs that are fully consistent with international law, international humanitarian law, human rights principles and human values,’ said the Ministry.
”It also criticised the United States government for not standing up and defending its own citizens when it comes to having to censure Israel for its actions against US citizens. What al-Qassem is going through highlights the volume of the US blind bias toward the Israeli occupation to the point of abandoning the rights of an American citizen who is going through the worst kind of political persecution’ said the Foreign Ministry in a statement.
• Israeli forces detained in overnight and predawn raids at least 24 Palestinians, including a woman, from across the West Bank districts, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) reports.
PPS said in a statement at least 15 people, including a woman, were detained by the Israeli army in the Tulkarem area, 12 of them from Shweikeh town, near Tulkarm, hometown of a Palestinian who allegedly shot and killed two Israeli settlers on Sunday. The detainees included father of the alleged attacker, Ashraf Naalweh.
Israeli soldiers also detained three people in Jericho, two others, aged 19 and 21, in the Nablus area, three more in Hebron district, in addition to a 17-year-old who was detained at a military checkpoint near Qalqilia.
• The three Palestinian Arabic dailies highlighted different topics in the main front page story in their Wednesday edition. The main front page story in al-Quds focused on the Palestinian daily protests at the Gaza border with Israel that resulted in the army shooting and injuring three Palestinians east of Deir al-Balah, as well as the army’s demolition of two rooms in a village south of Hebron in the West Bank.
Al-Ayyam said in its main front page story that army units took measurements of homes in Khan al-Ahmar village, east of Jerusalem, while Israeli settlers intensified their harassment of Palestinians harvesting their olive crops in the West Bank.
It said elsewhere on the front page that six settlers have sealed off thousands of dunums of Palestinian land in the northern Jordan Valley and attacked Palestinian residents in that area.
It said that the Israeli army has intensified its search of a Palestinian alleged to have attacked and killed two Israelis in a West Bank settlement on Sunday. Al-Hayat al-Jadida opted to highlight a telephone call between President Mahmoud Abbas and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, quoting Abbas as saying that negotiations with Israel should be based on the principle of two states on the 1967 lines, and Merkel saying that Germany and the European Union stand behind peace based on the two-state solution and expressing concern over the situation in the Gaza Strip.
The paper said in another story that the president of the Arab Parliament urged their German counterparts to recognise the state of Palestine and to support the United Nations Palestine refugee agency, UNRWA.
In other news, al-Quds and al-Ayyam reported on the entry of fuel to Gaza paid for by Qatar, while al-Hayat al-Jadida decided to report on this by highlighting Fatah’s response in which it said it will fight any attempt to break off Gaza from the homeland.
Al-Hayat al-Jadida said a delegation from the Jewish anti-Zionist orthodox movement, Natori Karta, visited Khan al-Ahmar on Tuesday in a show of solidarity with the condemned village and said that demolishing it will be devastating. The paper and al-Quds said Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah has decided to form a committee to investigate how ownership of a Palestinian property inside Jerusalem’s Old City was transferred to an Israeli settler group.
Al-Hayat al-Jadida also reported on a Palestinian family from Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem who have been detained by Israel. The army seized the mother and sister of the Abu Srour family and imprisoned them as they were the only two not in prison yet for resisting the occupation.
It said in another story that the head of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, Ahmad Assaf, met with the Russian ambassador to Palestine and discussed developing relations between the official Palestinian media and Russia Today TV station.
The three papers also reported on the resignation of the US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, as well as reports that the Trump campaign had solicited an Israeli company to smear the Hillary Clinton campaign during the American elections.
