Amazing what the Zionist's get away with ! Isn't it?

"As we witness the unfolding spectacle of ferocious, indiscriminate violence, destruction, and brutality in Gaza and in Lebanon, it's difficult to resist the conclusion that there is something terribly wrong with the "Israeli" state and society. It's as though all moral and psychological constraints and boundaries have been breached, deviancy normalized,,

.

Photo Fady Adwan PalestineFreeVoiceImages

How do we stop them ?

Question: Which country alone in the Middle East has nuclear weapons?

Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and bars international inspections? ?

Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East seized the sovereign territory of other nations by military force and continues to occupy it in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions?

Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East routinely violates the international borders of another sovereign state with warplanes and artillery and naval gunfire?

Answer: Israel .

Question: What American ally in the Middle East has for years sent assassins into other countries to kill its political enemies (a practice sometimes called exporting terrorism)?

Answer: Israel .

Question: In which country in the Middle East have high-ranking military officers admitted publicly that unarmed prisoners of war were executed?

Answer: Israel .

Question: What country in the Middle East refuses to prosecute its soldiers who have acknowledged executing prisoners of war?

Answer: Israel .

Question: What country in the Middle East created 762,000 refugees and refuses to allow them to return to their homes, farms and businesses?

Answer: Israel .

Question: What country in the Middle East refuses to pay compensation to people whose land, bank accounts and businesses it confiscated?

Answer: Israel .

Question: In what country in the Middle East was a high-ranking United Nations diplomat assassinated?

Answer: Israel .

Question: In what country in the Middle East did the man who ordered the assassination of a high-ranking U.N. diplomat become prime minister?

Answer: Israel .

Question: What country in the Middle East blew up an American diplomatic facility in Egypt and attacked a U.S. ship, the USS Liberty, in international waters, killing 34 and wounding 171 American sailors?

Answer: Israel .

Question: What country in the Middle East employed a spy, Jonathan Pollard, to steal classified documents and then gave some of them to the Soviet Union ?

Answer: Israel .

Question: What country at first denied any official connection to Pollard, then voted to make him a citizen and has continuously demanded that the American president grant Pollard a full pardon?

Answer: Israel .

Question: What Middle East country allows American Jewish murderers to flee to its country to escape punishment in the United States and refuses to extradite them once in their custody?

Answer: Israel .

Question: What Middle East country preaches against hate yet builds a shrine and a memorial for a murderer who killed 29 Palestinians while they prayed in their Mosque.?

Answer: Israel .

Question: What country on Planet Earth has the second most powerful lobby in the United States , according to a recent Fortune magazine survey of Washington insiders?

Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East deliberately targeted a U.N. Refugee Camp in Qana , Lebanon and killed 103 innocent men, women, and especially children?

Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East is in defiance of 69 United Nations Security Council resolutions and has been protected from 29 more by U.S. vetoes?

Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East receives more than one-third of all U.S. aid yet is the 16th richest country in the world?

Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East receives U.S. weapons for free and then sells the technology to the Republic of China even at the objections of the U.S. ?

Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East routinely insults the American people by having its Prime Minister address the United States Congress and lecturing them like children on why they have no right to reduce foreign aid?

Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East had its Prime Minister announce to his staff not to worry about what the United States says because "We control America ?"

Answer: Israel .

Question: What country in the Middle East was cited by Amnesty International for demolishing more than 4000 innocent Palestinian homes as a means of ethnic cleansing.

Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East has just recently used a weapon of mass destruction, a one-ton smart bomb, dropping it in the center of a highly populated area killing 15 civilians including 9 children?

Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East routinely kills young Palestinian children for no reason other than throwing stones at armored vehicles, bulldozers, or tanks?

Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East signed the Oslo Accords promising to halt any new Jewish Settlement construction, but instead, has built more than 270 new settlements since the signing?

Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East has assassinated more than 100 political officials of its opponent in the last 2 years while killing hundreds of civilians in the process, including dozens of children?

Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East regularly violates the Geneva Convention by imposing collective punishment on entire towns, villages, and camps, for the acts of a few, and even goes as far as demolishing entire villages while people are still in their homes?

Answer: Israel

Zionist Israel in a state of .moral, political, and psychiatric free fall

© PalestineFreeVoice Copyright reserved 2003 - 2011

Intellectual Rights Retained

Obama Administration Expands Offshore Drilling

.

March 31 2010

Environmental BAD NEWS:

The Barack Obama administration has proposed opening areas at the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas offshore drilling.

The proposal offers few concessions to environmentalists,who have been imperative in our opposition to more oil platforms off nations shores. The Obama plan modifies a ban that for more than 20 years has limited drilling along US coastal areas, other than the Gulf of Mexico.

The new plan echoed the short-sighted policy of the past.The decision is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time.

If approved, the proposal would end a long-standing moratorium on drilling along the east coast of the US.The cost of oil drilling and oil consumption has drained the economy, endangered national security, and polluted the environment from the point of extraction to combustion, leaving a trail of oil spills, smog-forming air pollution and global warming in its wake!!!!

Hiyam Noir March 31 2010

Related;

TED Case studies

TED Case studies 2

Worth the risk?

Treehugger.com

Planetgreen

© PalestineFreeVoice Copyright reserved 2003 - 2011

Intellectual Rights Retained

Ismail Radwan; Abbas Proved in Libya his Ineligibility to Talk on Behalf of his People

22-03 2010 - 06:34PM GAZA, (PIC)-- Senior Hamas official Ismail Radwan stated Sunday that Mahmoud Abbas’s use of the Arab summit as a platform for attacking the Movement was the best evidence of his ineligibility to represent the Palestinian people in any Arab or international meeting. In a press release, Radwan said that Abbas, from a legal and constitutional standpoint, is no longer the chief of the Palestinian Authority because his term of office expired long time ago, besides he failed in the political and moral test and became not entitled to represent the Palestinians. The official added that Abbas always uses an offensive and violent language whenever he attacks Hamas, but he does not use this kind of language when it comes to Israel, and rather he chooses soft and lenient words as if he begs for peace negotiations. He noted that Abbas’s accusation that Hamas carried out a coup against his authority is untrue, because he and his faction were the parties that turned against the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people and refused to recognize the result of the legislative election.

© PalestineFreeVoice Copyright reserved 2003 - 2011

Intellectual Rights Retained

Israeli Policies in East Jerusalem

.



Friday, 26 March, 2010 - 23:16

London, UK

East Jerusalem’ is not only the Old City. The eastern section of Jerusalem is larger than the western section (77 square kilometers vs. 45 square kilometers); it contains more than half the city`s residents, Jews and Arabs. It also includes one refugee camp (Shu’afat).

In 1967, after occupying the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights, the government of Israel annexed East Jerusalem and an additional tract of Palestinian land, in contravention of International Humanitarian Law (IHL).

Israel applied Israeli law to the eastern parts of the city, and granted residency rights to 66,000 Palestinians registered by census as its inhabitants. This status is different from citizenship: it does not enable its holders to participate in national elections and can be revoked at the discretion of the Ministry of Interior.

Two legal systems apply to East Jerusalem residents: IHL (the laws of occupation), and Israeli law.

Israeli objectives in East Jerusalem

Israeli governments seek:To preserve a single, ‘united’ Jerusalem that will be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel;

To isolate Jerusalem and its institutions from Palestinian communities in the rest of the OPT, in order to limit the ability of the Palestinian leadership to claim the city for its own;To preserve a ratio of 70% Jews to 30% Palestinians in Jerusalem (East and West).In order to achieve these objectives, Israeli government policies have included:

Separating East Jerusalem from the West Bank.Restricting Palestinian life in East Jerusalem.

Expanding the boundaries of the city and encouraging Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem. Israeli policies in East Jerusalem;

I. Separating East Jerusalem from the West Bank

Israeli governments have restricted access of Palestinian communities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to key institutions that used to serve them in Jerusalem: medical (e.g., Maqassed hospital), religious (e.g., the Al-Aqsa compound) and political (e.g., the Orient House).

The Palestinian Authority is forbidden to provide services in the city, leaving Palestinian residents dependent on services provided by Israel – not equal to those of the Jewish population, and not designed to answer their needs.

From 2003, a 168-km long concrete and barbed-wire barrier was constructed to separate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. In some places, the wall encroaches on Palestinian neighbourhoods in the city, so that residents who still pay municipal taxes and carry Israeli identity cards find themselves on the “West Bank” side of the barrier.

The wall separates Palestinian communities from each other or cuts through the heart of Palestinian neighbourhoods. It restricts the entry of West Bank Palestinians into the city, who may only enter via designated crossings at specific points.

II. Restricting Palestinian life in East Jerusalem

Since 1973, the Israeli government has employed a series of restrictive policies to make the lives of Palestinian residents in the city untenable and ‘encourage’ them to leave the city:

Restrictive planning policies prevent Palestinian development and construction and deny Palestinians the right to build legally; the result is massive home demolitions of houses built without permits. Although they are a third of Jerusalem’s population, Palestinians only control 9% of its land;

Discriminatory budget allocation restricts Palestinian access to basic infrastructure and services such as roads, sewage, sanitation, healthcare and education;

Revocation of personal status and the ‘silent transfer’: Many Palestinians responded to the housing shortage by moving to towns on the West Bank or to suburbs of Jerusalem on the municipal boundaries of the city, while continuing to work inside the city and pay taxes.

The Israeli government used this gradual exodus by employing the Ministry of Interior and other bodies to monitor Jerusalem residents and to revoke their residency status, claiming they had ‘left the country’. In 1996 the Occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip were defined as ‘overseas’ for the purpose of residence and thousands of people had their residency – and the right to live in Jerusalem – revoked. This policy, called ‘the silent transfer,’ continues to this day.

III. Expanding the city; encouraging Jewish settlement

a. Governmental settlements

After 1967, Israeli governments extended the municipal boundaries of the city several times at the expense of the West Bank, and built Jewish neighbourhoods on expropriated Palestinian lands.

Palestinian East Jerusalem is made up of urban neighbourhoods inside and adjacent to the Old City, and of discrete villages and hamlets within the modern city boundaries.

The Israeli settlement project follows a pattern that extends the urban sprawl of Jewish West Jerusalem eastward; surrounds and interrupts existing Palestinian neighbourhoods; and severs the Palestinian neighbourhoods and villages of Jerusalem from their rural hinterland in the West Bank.

Like in the West Bank, Jerusalem’s settlements are usually built on hilltops and constructed in fortress-like formations.

Settlements founded shortly after the annexation of East Jerusalem include e.g., Ramat Eshkol (1968), French Hill (1971) and Gilo (1971). These neighbourhoods are now considered by most Israelis to be an integral part of the Jewish city.

More recent projects include Har Homa (1997) and Ramat Shlomo (1994). Further new projects are planned at Giv’at HaMatos and Giv’at Yael.

Since the changing of the borders of the city in 1967, 30% of the lands of East Jerusalem have been expropriated to build Jewish neighbourhoods, which are now home to about 200,000 Israeli Jews.

b. ‘Unofficial’ settlements

Usually initiated by private settler groups, ‘unofficial’ settlements were not openly supported by governments until recently.

Such settlements involve Jewish expropriation or construction activities in the heart of the Moslem Quarter of the Old City and in the midst of Palestinian neighbourhoods adjacent to the Old City, such as Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah.

The aim of these settlements is to create facts on the ground and gradually gain control over the holy sites in the Old City, disconnecting them from a Palestinian continuum. They are characterised by direct confrontation with local Palestinian residents, and have been compared to settlements in Hebron, where a tiny and aggressive Jewish presence is heavily guarded in the midst of large Palestinian communities.

Although ostensibly unofficial, since 1967 governments have provided indirect support and funding to settlements of this type in sensitive parts of the city. More recently, the Jerusalem municipality has earmarked large tracts of Palestinian land around the Old City, ostensibly for a national park development, but in fact in order to entrench Jewish control over the area surrounding the sacred sites, and to stop Palestinians from building there.

Settlements of both types have increased and accelerated since 2000, in a bid to create facts on the ground before any final settlement. The ‘unofficial’ type has also gained more overt governmental support.

Despite Israel’s 30:70 ratio target, the number of Palestinians in Jerusalem in 2008 was 268,000, and its total population was 763,000.

(For a more detailed discussion of Israeli approaches to settlements in East Jerusalem, of recent developments in Israeli government policies and of US responses to them, see JNews editorial: Israel, the US and Jerusalem: Challenging deep-seated assumptions)

Concluding remarks

Israeli government policies in the city faithfully reflect the ambivalence of Israelis who are unwilling to contain the Palestinian residents and grant them equal rights, yet are unable completely to exclude them, due to Israel’s aspiration to a greater, ‘united’ Jerusalem. This pattern of simultaneous acceptance and rejection, annexation and occupation seems untenable.

The Palestinian Authority, for its part, is more interested in symbols of sovereignty in Jerusalem than in catering to the needs of its inhabitants. It is more likely to organise demonstrations against threats to religious symbols than act to protect the social benefits and housing rights of residents.

Palestinian residents of the city are thus caught between the national aspirations of both authorities and splintered into multiple groups, both socially and physically. They have become highly vulnerable, since they are dependent on Israel for their civil and social rights, and find it difficult to resist the growing measures taken against them in an organised manner.

Source: JNews

© PalestineFreeVoice Copyright reserved 2003 - 2011

Intellectual Rights Retained

Another Arab Summit: Another Exercise in Political Impotence

.

28 March, 2010

By Khalid Amayreh

Once again, hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims around the world are affronted with another Arab summit conference, which is taking place in Serte in Libya. There, flamboyant dictators, dynastic despots and presidents-for-life have converged on the North African Arab nation to perform an annual futile ritual known as the Arab summit conference.

Over the years, the annual ritual effectively became a buzzword for futility, incompetence and idiotic wrangling among petty dictators and tribesmen-like heads of state.

Eventually, the chronic, striking inability of these summiteers to get anything worthwhile done earned them special notoriety for political inertness, ineptness and impotence. To cover up their annual season of shame, these leaders would issue a communiqué that is as mendacious as a whore’s mouth.

Take, for example, the Palestinian question. Dozens of Arab conferences have been held since the creation in Palestine of the criminal state called Israel. However, every time these impotent tyrants met, they would regurgitate the same impotence and ineptitude they had displayed the previous year.

Today, we are told that the Serte summit will discuss the ordeal facing Jerusalem which houses al Masjidul Aqsa (Aqsa Mosque), the holy place to which the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was taken from Makka by the night and from which his subsequent miraculous journey to the highest heaven took place.

Jerusalem is being stolen house by house, wall by wall and even stone by stone by the merchants of lie and falsifiers of history, the Khazari Zionist Jews, who have committed the grandest act of theft since Adam and Eve. A few years from now, it is possible that no East Jerusalem will have been left if the present state of affair in the Arab-Muslim world remains unchanged.

It is really sad and lamentable that the issue of Jerusalem and Palestine is being entrusted to essentially morally corrupt leaders who can do no good. In the Quran, it is related in Surat Younus, verse 81, that “Allah prospereth not the work of the mischief-makers.”

This means that nothing good or constructive can be expected from these summits for one simple reason, namely that these Arab leaders are actually part of the problem, if not the problem itself, facing the Arab world and as such they can’t be part of the solution.

To begin with, these so-called heads of states have no sovereign will of their own, given their scandalous subservience to foreign powers. We all know that the Arab world can have immense leverage on US policy toward the Middle East, especially the enduring Palestinian plight.

However, instead of dealing with the US in the language of mutual interests, we see that these despots are often willing to surrender all their sovereignty and national dignity to the Zionist-run Washington in return for receiving American assurances and backing, especially with regard to them staying in power for life.

These hopelessly impotent and undignified kings, princes and presidents are not only betraying Arab and Muslim interests, but are also conspiring and conniving with the enemies of Islam in order to enable Israel to liquidate the Palestinian cause.

This shocking perfidy has lately manifested itself in the collective Arab stance vis-à-vis Gaza where 1.6 million Arabs have been on the receiving end of a slow-motion holocaust being perpetrated by the children, grand-children and great grandchildren of the holocaust victims. And instead of adopting a dignified posture in the face of Zionist insolence and criminality, some of these Arab states even refused to sever diplomatic relations with the Nazis or our time.

In fact, some of these Arab despots are not only looking on passively as Gaza children and women are being thoroughly savaged and brutalized by the Judeo-Nazi regime but are actually perfecting and tightening the infernal siege on the people of Gaza on no account other than the fact that the victims had dared elect Hamas, a political party that dared say NO to Jewish Nazism and American hegemony.

Added to this is the fact that most if not all Arab regimes do excel in tormenting and savaging their own peoples by denying them the most basic human rights, political freedoms and civil liberties, including the right to elect their own rulers. Hence, it would be foolhardy and infinitely naïve to expect these dictators and tyrants to help the Palestinian people and their enduring just cause in any substantive manner.

Even the Arab masses, with a few notable exceptions, can’t freely express their solidarity with the Palestinian people because they fear getting arrested and tortured by the police-state agents whose main job is to torment and persecute the citizens in order to ensure that no opposition to the dictator is allowed to see the light of the day.

Besides, and despite all the claims to the contrary, the Palestinian cause has never been a truly pressing priority for most Arab regimes, especially the Gulf Sheikhdoms whose leaders are basking in their oil wealth and having nearly pornographic obsequious alliances with the United States, while Israel, America’s spoiled child, is constantly trying to decapitate the Palestinian cause, destroy Islamic holy places in Jerusalem and liquidate the national existence of the Palestinian people.

Some of these decadent despots and their hangers-on might think that allocating a few hundred million dollars would save Jerusalem and help the Palestinians ward off the Zionist beast.

But this is not the case because money alone will not stop Israel from liquidating the Palestinian cause and obliterating the fast-fading Arab-Islamic identity of Jerusalem.

The liberation of Jerusalem requires competent leadership, strong political will and true statesmanship. The Arabs must give America the “red eye” if they are sincere about linking their relations with Washington to Washington’s enduring embrace of Israeli Nazism.

But America will not take any Arab measure seriously if Arab leaders keep indulging in the same treacherous tradition of denouncing America and Israel during their summit conferences while at the same time intimating to American diplomats that they really didn’t meant it and that they only had to say what they said for Arab public opinion consumption.

For sure, the cause of Jerusalem and al Masjidul Aqsa can’t and will not be served by this treasonous duplicity.(end)

Source: Palestinian Information Center

Author: Khalid Amayreh

© PalestineFreeVoice Copyright reserved 2003 - 2011

Intellectual Rights Retained

Gaza: Palestine Resistance in Fierce Battle with Zionist Occupant

Abu Obeida, spokesperson for Hamas military wing Ezzedene Al- Qassam Brigades in press conference in Gaza City on Friday night. March 26 2010. Two or more Zionist " soldiers" killed, 3 or more wounded during fierce gun battle.

By Hiyam Noir

Update 3/28/10 4:44 AM

GAZA - Two Palestinian resistance fighters, not yet identified, died in clashes between the Palestinian military and the Zionist occupation forces on Friday.The two Palestinians were bleeding to death.When members of the Palestinian resistance suffer serious injuries, need of transport to hospital for emergency care, in accordance with regular practice the Zionists occupation deny ambulances and medical teams access to the area.

On Friday Israeli warplanes killed the 23 year old Abed Al- Haki Arafat, in an air strike following fierce clashes between the Palestinian armed resistance and the Zionist occupation army, along the eastern Gaza border.In the Abasan Al-Jadida area of Khan Younis, local residents including a child, a 10 year old boy sustained shrapnel wounds when their homes were shelled.

And Saeed Abed Al-Aziz Hamdan, 15, was injured when a Zionist opened fire at the child, collecting stones nearby a watchtower erected in the area of the Erez crossing.

The Gaza Health Ministry report that 12 Palestinians were injured when Zionist tanks and bulldozers moved into Gaza across the border outside the village of Khuza'a.Two Zionist terrorists were killed, a number of others were injured.

Zionists occupant perpetrators remain on Saturday in the southern area of Gaza Strip.Gun battle can be heard and fire from Zionist naval ships along the Gaza coast lines.Covered by Apache helicopters, Zionist warplanes shelled areas at the eastern parts of Khan Younis.

Laud explosions could be heard in the Ad-Dughma and Abu Tu'eima neighborhoods of Abasan Al-Jadida.Three Zionist terrorists were evacuated by helicopter landing in Khan Younis. A roadside bomb was detonated, when the aircraft landed to evacuate the injured.

On Thursday two Gaza residents were injured by Zionist fire in northern Beit Lahia and southern Rafah.

Abu Obeida,the spokes person of Hamas military wing, Ezzedene Al-Qassam Brigades,said in a statement that it's forces killed two Zionist terrorists, another was injured when the Zionist in tanks and bulldozers trespassed the borders more than 500 meter into Gaza.

The Al- Aqsa TV, Hamas official news chanel, aired an interview with Abu Obeida he said that; " Our Brigades responded with heavy shelling and gunfire, causing fatalities and injuries among the Zionists, our Brigades acted in self defense when the Zionist enemy made the incursion into Gaza".

Operatives of the Al-Quds Brigades, military wing of Islamic Jihad, discovered an undercover Zionist unit in Abasan Al-Jadida. Series of explosives were detonated during the ensuring clashes, meanwhile Zionist warplanes fired missiles several Al- Quds Brigades operatives were injured in the clashes, one fighter is reported missing.

Fatah's military wing, the Al-Aqsa Brigades,said it's forces intervened after an undercover Israeli unit was disclosed. "The Brigades fighters are clashing fiercely with Israeli soldiers in Khan Younis, where seven mortar shells were fired on armored Israeli vehicles, hitting these vehicles directly," a statement said.

According to local witnesses, the Al Aqsa Brigades, launched mortar shells toward Israeli towns, in the western Negev, one projectile struck the Negev Regional Council area, causing no damage or injury.

-------------------------------

Report from Ezzedene Al- Qassam Brigades:

Zionist/ Israeli violations of international & humanitarian law

20-03-2010,09:41

During the reporting period, 31 Palestinian civilians, including 4 children and 5 women, were wounded when IOF used excessive force against peaceful demonstrations organized in protest to the construction of the Annexation Wall and settlement activities in the West Bank.

During the reporting period, IOF issued a military order declaring the area of the Annexation Wall in Bal'ein and Ne'lin villages, west of Ramallah, a closed military zone on Fridays, banning access of Palestinian civilians to the area. According to the order, such ban will remain effective until 17 August 2010.

In the Gaza Strip, IOF fired at Palestinian workers and fishing boats. They also fire at a peaceful protest against the security zone IOF plan to establish along the border.

On 12 March 2010, Israeli warplanes bombarded and destroyed a factory of plastics in Khan Yunis.

During the reporting period, IOF conducted at least 13 military incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank. IOF arrested 27 Palestinian civilians, including two children and a journalist.

In the Gaza Strip, on 12 March 2010, IOF moved into the east of Jabalya town in the northern Gaza Strip. They leveled areas of land which they had already razed.

IOF have continued to impose a tightened siege on the OPT and imposed severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem.

Gaza Strip

IOF have continued to close all border crossings to the Gaza Strip for more than two years. The Israeli siege of Gaza, which has steadily tightened since June 2007, has had a disastrous impact on the humanitarian and economic situation in the Gaza Strip.

On Friday, 01 January 2010, IOF decided to close the crossing permanently, and to allow the entry of fuels through Karm Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing, southeast of Rafah, for security claims.

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.

The main concern of the population of the Gaza Strip is to obtain their basic needs of food, medicines, water and electricity supplies.

IOF have continued to prevent the entry of raw construction materials into the Gaza Strip for more than two years.

IOF have not allowed fuel supplies into the Gaza Strip, excluding few amounts of cooking gas and energy fuel for Gaza Power Plant, since 10 December 2008.

The Rafah International Crossing Point has been opened for a few days for a number of patients who received medical treatment abroad and needed to return home to the Gaza Strip.

IOF have continued to close Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing in the face of Palestinian civilians wishing to travel to the West Bank and Israeli for medical treatment, trade or social visits.

IOF have imposed additional restrictions on access of international diplomats, journalists and humanitarian workers to the Gaza Strip. They have prevented representatives of several international humanitarian organizations from entering the Gaza Strip.

Living conditions of the Palestinian civilian population have seriously deteriorated; levels of poverty and unemployment have sharply mounted.

At least 800 Gazan prisoners in Israeli jails have been deprived for family visitation for more than two years

.

IOF have continued it's attacks on Palestinian fishermen along the Gaza Strip coast.

West Bank

IOF have continued to impose severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians throughout the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem. Thousands of Palestinian civilians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip continue to be denied access to Jerusalem.

IOF have established checkpoints in and around Jerusalem, severely restricting Palestinian access to the city. Civilians are frequently prevented from praying at the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

There are approximately permanent 630 roadblocks, manned and unmanned checkpoints across the West Bank. In addition, there are some 60-80 ‘flying’ or temporary checkpoints erected across the West Bank by IOF every week.

When complete, the illegal Annexation Wall will stretch for 724 kilometers around the West Bank, further isolating the entire population. 350 kilometers of the Wall has already been constructed. Approximately 99% of the Wall has been constructed inside the West Bank itself, further confiscating Palestinian land.

At least 65% of the main roads that leads to 18 Palestinian communities in the West Bank are closed or fully controlled by IOF (47 out of 72 roads).

There are around 500 kilometers of restricted roads across the West Bank. In addition, approximately one third of the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, is inaccessible to Palestinians without a permit issued by the IOF. These permits are extremely difficult to obtain.

IOF continue to harass, and assault demonstrators who hold peaceful protests against the construction of the Annexation Wall

.

Palestinian civilians continue to be harassed by IOF in Jerusalem, and across the West Bank, including being regularly stopped and searched in the streets by IOF.

On Thursday, 11 March 2010, IOF started imposing increased restrictions on the movement of Palestinians in the old city. According to eyewitnesses, hundreds of Border Police officers established military checkpoints at the entrances of the old city, on all of the streets inside the walls of the old city, as well as on streets in the immediate vicinity.

They prevented all those who were not residents of the old city from entering it. In addition, Palestinians under 50 years of age were not permitted to enter al-Aqsa Mosque, all gates to the al-Aqsa compound, with the exception of al-Majles, Hattah and al-Selselah gates, were closed.

On Saturday, 13 March 2010, IOF closed al-Aqsa Secondary School for Girls, the Shari'a Secondary School and the Islamic Kindergarten of al-Aqsa, all of which are located inside al-Aqsa compound.

These measures, which are still ongoing, came on the eve of the inauguration of a synagogue in al-Shorfah neighborhood. The synagogue is located 300 meters to the west of al-Aqsa Mosque and was inaugurated yesterday, on Monday, 15 March 2010. IOF have continued settlement activities and Israeli settlers living in the OPT in violation of international humanitarian law have continued to attack Palestinian civilians and property.

On Thursday morning, 11 March, the Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported that the Israeli Municipality of Jerusalem set out plans to build thousands of housing units in Jerusalem, especially in the east and south of the city. The plans are supported by the Israeli government. The distribution of the new unit is like this: 3,000 units in "Gilo" settlement; 1,500 one in "Har Homa" settlement; 1,500 ones in "Pisgat Ze'ev" settlement; 3,000 one in "Giv'at Matosim" settlement; 1,200 ones in "Ramot" settlement; 600 ones in "Armona Netseev" settlement; 450 in "Neve Yacov" settlement; and 144 ones in "Olive Mount" settlement. A new settlement neighborhood of 13,000 housing unit will also be established near al-Walaja village, northwest of Bethlehem.

On Friday morning, 12 March 2010, dozens of Israeli settlers from "Elli" settlement attacked Battisha area in the northwest of Qaryout village, southeast of Nablus. They uprooted 40 olive trees.l Qassam website/Agencies - Turkish premier Recep Erdogan has described Zionist premier Benjamin Netanyahu's statement about retaining Jerusalem as the eternal, unified capital of Israel as sheer "madness".

He said in a statement at the inaugural session of the Arab summit in Libya that the statement would lead to serious consequences affecting the enire region.

Erdogan said the international community faced a new and tough test in regard to reviving peace process there.

"Jerusalem is of great importance for the whole region and the Islamic world. Israel's attacks on Jerusalem and sacred places cannot be accepted," he said.

The premier said that the construction of 1,600 new housing units in occupied east Jerusalem was not justified.

© PalestineFreeVoice Copyright reserved 2003 - 2011

Intellectual Rights Retained