THE Palestinian Arabic dailies highlighted on Sunday the news about the Palestinian youth who was shot dead by Israeli forces during clashes in Jenin in the occupied West Bank.
Al-Quds, al-Ayyam and al-Hayat al-Jadida said Ahmad Samir Abu Obeid, 19, from the city of Jenin, was shot in the head and critically injured on Saturday during clashes with Israeli soldiers near Jenin, north of the West Bank. Abu Obeid died of his wounds hours later.
The dailies also said the Israeli army raided several areas in the Jenin district all day long on Saturday and searched several homes. The soldiers were apparently searching for a Palestinian who allegedly killed an Israeli settler in a drive-by shooting near Nablus last month.
The raids focused on the village of Burqin, south of Jenin, where residents clashed with the soldiers who fired live bullets and teargas to disperse them. A number of Palestinians were reportedly detained during the raid.
The meeting of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in the presidential headquarters in the city of Ramallah was also highlighted.
The newspapers said the Committee decided to seek action against the Israeli occupation at the United Nations Security Council, the General Assembly, and the International Criminal Court (ICC).
They also said that the Committee asked the government to begin devising plans to disengage from the Israeli occupation authorities at the political, security, economic and administrative levels.
Al-Hayat al-Jadida said that Palestine’s ambassador to the EU, Abdul Rahim al-Farra, said the European Union’s Political and Security Committee discussed in its session on Wednesday a secret report that strongly criticised Israel and its policies, and also discussed the situation in occupied East Jerusalem in particular.
Al-Ayyam said that Israeli warplanes fired two missiles at a site in the city of Rafah, to the south of the Gaza Strip, before drones fired two more missiles at the same site, causing damage but no injuries.
Israeli security sources said that the Gaza Strip is collapsing and that economical and humanitarian crisis is exacerbating, according to al-Quds and al-Ayyam.
• The Knesset’s Joint Arab List MK Ahmad Tibi said that US President Donald Trump’s consultants’ ideas are nothing but old Israeli ideas that were rejected in the past and would be rejected again because they don’t represent the minimum of the legitimate Palestinian rights, as reported in al-Quds.
Israeli politician and Labour Party leader Avi Gabbay said that Israel needs a leader who would seize the opportunity for a two-state solution.
Meanwhile the Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has promised to legalise a settlement outpost near the city of Nablus, to the north of the occupied West Bank, in response to the killing of one of its settlers last month.
Netanyahu said during the weekly Israeli cabinet meeting that the government will legalise the illegal Israeli outpost of ‘Havat Gilad’ in order to ‘allow the continuing of a normal life there.’
This came in the aftermath of the killing of a settler last month in a drive-by shooting near Nablus.
Israeli forces since then have carried out wide-scale search-and-arrest operations in several areas of the West Bank, especially in the district of Jenin, in an apparently continuing search for Ahmad Nasr Jarrar, who Israel believes was behind the deadly attack against the settler.
The anti-settlement Peace Now group said that, ‘It would be a grave mistake to officially recognise Havat Gilad, as it would further undermine the possibility of reaching a two-state agreement.
‘Israel would have to evacuate the outpost in any foreseeable two-state solution scenario, which, together with the other settlements and outposts it will have to evacuate, would require tremendous political will on Israel’s part.’
The group noted that, ‘In the event that such a move for Havat Gilad is approved, the Government of Israel will be crossing another red line by legitimating land theft on a much larger scale than in previous cases.
‘The legalisation of the outpost would signal that the government does not intend to advance a final peace agreement, but rather only to extend Israel’s hold on the West Bank and to prevent the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state alongside an Israel with secure, internationally recognised borders,’ said the Peace Now group.
• The Ministry of Foreign and Expatriates Affairs said on Sunday that the ongoing Israeli offensive against unarmed Palestinian civilians in Jenin district unveils the racism, extremism, and hatred prevailing within Israel’s political and military institutions.
In a press statement, the ministry described the Israeli offensive as the result of the widespread incitement by Israeli officials and religious instructions by rabbis, who encourage the use of violence against Palestinians.
The statement came in the aftermath of the Israeli offensive on Jenin governorate, north of the West Bank, which involved raids on the villages of Burqin, Kfeir, and Zababda, and the city of Jenin, Jenin camp and other areas.
The ongoing Israeli offensive resulted in the fatal shooting of Palestinian youth Ahmad Abu Obeid, 19, and the injury of scores others.
• Cancer was the second main cause of death in Palestine during 2016, said the Ministry of Health in a special report on the World Cancer Day.
It said cancer was the second cause of death in 2016 accounting for 14% of the total deaths, after cardiovascular diseases which account for 30.6% of all causes of death.
Palestine also witnessed a noticeable increase in cancer cases from 1073 cases in 2000 to 2536 in 2016 in the West Bank alone, and 59.1% of these cases appeared among the youth age group between 15 and 64 years, the ministry said.
Meanwhile, 35.7% of cancer cases were among the elderly above 65 years, while 5.2% of such cases prevailed among children below the age of 15.
In terms of the geographical distribution of the cases documented in 2016, the highest percentage was in Bethlehem governorate, where 160.1 among 100,000 people were diagnosed with cancer, followed by Jericho governorate where 123.2 cases per 100,000 people were infected with the disease.
The least such percentage was in Jerusalem governorate, where 13.8 persons among 100,000 people were infected with cancer.
Breast cancer ranked first among other cancers reported in 2016, with 388 cases of breast cancer documented, amounting to 15.3% of total cancer cases reported in the West Bank. The colon cancer ranked second at 10.3%, followed by Leukemia at 8.4%, lung cancer at 8.3% and brain cancer at 5% of the total cases.
The study revealed that 32% of the cases of breast cancer occurred in Hebron governorate during 2016, the highest percentage among the other governorates, while the lowest percentage was in Jenin governorate at 2%.
