RAMALLAH, Sunday, January 12, 2020 (WAFA) – News about Israeli plans to expand an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank made headlines the front pages of the three Arabic Palestinian dailies on Sunday.
Al-Hayat al-Jadida, al-Quds and al-Ayyam said that Israeli fanatic settlers razed Palestinian-owned lands in the West Bank village of Bruqin, near Salfit, in order to expand the illegal Israeli settlement of Brukhin.
The papers added that Israeli forces opened a rainwater collection dams along the border with the Gaza Strip, causing about 1,000 dunams of agricultural land planted with wheat, barley, peas, cabbage, and cauliflower to sink.
Al-Hayat al-Jadida reported that the village council of the Tulkarm-area village Shufa revealed Israeli plans to seize about 2000 donums of the village land in order to establish a settler-only industrial zone.
A number of Palestinian shoppers suffocated from teargas fired by Israeli soldiers in the Ramallah-area town of Silwad. The soldiers fired the teargas into a shopping center in the town causing panic and suffocation, said the papers.
Al-Ayyam said that the Israel Prison Services (IPS) decided to move 60 Palestinian minor prisoners held at Ofer military camp and prison, near Ramallah, to Damoun prison in Israel without any of their adult overseers.
Palestinian administrative detainee in Israel, Ahmad Zahran, 42, has been reported in critical condition after 111 days of hunger strike, according to Al-Hayat al-Jadida.
Al-Hayat al-Jadida said that President Mahmoud Abbas mourned Oman’s Sultan Qaboos Bin Said in a statement, praising the progress in all fields achieved by the Sultanate during his reign. The President expressed his and the Palestinian people’s deepest sorrow for his death, affirming that Palestine stands by the Sultanate of Oman and its brotherly people in these difficult circumstances.
The President also declared a three-day official period of mourning.
According to the biweekly Protection of Civilians Report covering the period between 24 December 2019 and 6 January 2020 published by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Israel demolished or seized a total of 621 Palestinian structures in the West Bank during 2019, the majority on grounds of lack of permits, displacing 914 Palestinians, as reported in al-Quds.
It also said that in 2019, Israeli forces killed 15 Palestinians and injured 3162 others, including 104 by live ammunition, during protests and clashes across the West Bank, and uprooted 147 olive trees, which were 25-30 years old, affecting the livelihood of eight Palestinian families from al-Jaba’ village in the Bethlehem district claiming they were located in an area designated as ‘state land’.
K.T/M.N
