Israeli forces raided the al-Quds University, on Wednesday, in Abu Dis village, south east of the central occupied West Bank district of Jerusalem. Local sources confirmed that a large number of heavily armed Israeli forces raided the campus, ransacking several faculties and offices, causing material damages.
Israeli forces searched student offices, damaged the students’ personal belongings, and seized surveillance camera recordings. Prior to the raid, violent clashes erupted among Palestinian youths and Israeli forces.
Al-Quds University, along with other Palestinian universities, has been subjected to numerous Israeli military raids in the past. The university was raided several times and Israeli forces destroyed its property, injured scores of students, confiscated the school’s equipment and documents, and even staged a raid during a book fair for students on low incomes, proceeding to destroy and confiscate all the contents of the fair.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military court of Petch Tikva extended, on Wednesday, the detention of a Palestinian journalist, who was detained on Monday, for 12 days. The thirty-two-year-old journalist Hussein Shujaiya, is from Ramallah, and was detained by Israeli forces during pre-dawn raids.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) said that the Petah Tikva court also prevented Shujaiya from meeting with his lawyer. A trial for fellow Palestinian journalist, Samih Manasra, 28 ,from the northern West Bank district of Tulkarem, is being held at Salem.
The court also issued an order preventing Manasra from meeting his lawyer. He was detained by Israeli forces, after Israeli soldiers raided and searched his home during pre-dawn raids.
• The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) held the Israeli government responsible for settler calls for the assassination of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and other examples of settler terrorism. PLO Executive Committee member, Hanan Ashrawi, said: ‘We strongly condemn Israeli settler threats and hate language targeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, including the distribution and display of posters calling for the assassination of President Abbas.
‘The Israeli government is directly responsible for these open calls for the president’s assassination and any escalation of hate crimes and settler terrorism against Palestinian citizens and their property.’
She added: ‘This right-wing extremist government has lent its tacit support and protection to armed settler militias who have terrorised Palestinian civilians and carried out heinous assaults, including fatal arson attacks against defenceless families.
‘In fact, this Israeli government is made up of the most extreme and racist representatives of the settler movement who regularly foment hate speech against the Palestinian people.’
Ashrawi stressed: ‘The calls for the assassination of the president come in the objectionable context of hate and incitement against Palestinians, which is encouraged by the culture of impunity in Israel and the international community’s consistent failure to hold Israel accountable for its violations.’
Ashrawi called on members of the international community ‘to hold Israel liable for its breach of international law and to respond to these threats with the appropriate indignation and reproach’. ‘Coupled with its systematic deconstruction of the prospects of peace, Israel’s reprehensible endorsement of hate speech against the Palestinian people and their leadership threatens to further destabilise the situation on the ground and condemn the region to permanent conflict.’
• Palestine is set to finalise a protest note to be submitted to the United Nations Security Council over Israeli settlers’ incitement against President Mahmoud Abbas, Palestine’s permanent representative to the United Nations Riyad Masnour has announced. Masnour said that it is also about the intrusion into the Dome of the Rock and raids into official institutions, particularly the Palestine News and Information Agency (WAFA).
The note which was almost completed, he explained, would be delivered to the President of the UNSC and through him to both the UN Secretary-General António Guterres and President of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) María Fernanda Espinosa to call on the international community to shoulder its responsibility in this regard.
The Council of Arab Ambassadors to the UN will convene to evaluate the recent failure of the US-sponsored draft resolution condemning Hamas to secure an overwhelming majority at the UN General Assembly.
Israeli settlers hung posters with Abbas’ picture in the middle of a gun target circle at the Huwwara crossroads in southern Nablus, calling for his assassination. The posters, were not removed by Israeli soldiers deployed in the area, they read ‘supporter of terrorists’, in reference to Abbas and called for his killing.
• Germany contributed 21 million euros for completing the final phase in the reconstruction of Nahr el-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, the Lebanese Palestinian Dialogue Committee said on Wednesday. It was informed by the Lebanese Council of Ministers that the German government has agreed to contribute the money towards completing the reconstruction after Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri has requested this during the Brussels meeting on Syria held last May.
Details of how to disperse this money will be discussed early next year in a meeting at the German embassy in Beirut with the Dialogue Committee in its capacity as the governmental committee responsible for Palestinian refugee affairs in Lebanon. Head of the committee said an additional 80 million euros will be needed to complete the final phase in this project, urging the Arab countries to pay their dues to push forward the reconstruction.
• Israeli forces on Wednesday detained seven Palestinians from the occupied West Bank, said the Palestine Prisoners’ Society (PPS). Israeli forces detained three Palestinians, including two brothers, during a raid in Barta’a village, west of Jenin city.
Soldiers ransacked scores of houses, interrogated their owners, and seized several vehicles.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces detained three from Ramallah and al-Bireh district.
A pre-dawn raid was reported in Hizma town, north east of Jerusalem, where military police detained a Palestinian after breaking into his family’s house.
Several military raids were reported in Surif and Yatta towns, north west and south of Hebron, in addition to a number of Hebron city neighbourhoods, where soldiers searched several houses, including the house of a prisoner serving a life sentence in Israeli jails.
