RAMALLAH, February 2, 2017 (WAFA) – The evacuation of Israeli settlers from Amona outpost and the Israeli approval of 3,000 new housing units in West Bank settlements hit the front page headlines in the Palestinian dailies on Thursday.
Al-Quds and al-Ayyam said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a plan to establish a new settlement in the West Bank to house settlers removed from Amona. It added Israeli right-wing leaders threatened to annex the West Bank.
Al-Ayyam said in this regard Israeli occupation authorities evacuated settlers from 40 carvans in Amona outpost, noting that the evacuation served as a smokescreen for Israel’s plan to construct 3,000 new units in settlements across the West Bank.
Al-Hayat al-Jadida said in this regard Netanyahu’s government announced a plan to construct thousands of new settler units in return for the evacuation of settlers from Amona.
Palestinian officials have also described the eviction of settlers from Amona as a smokescreen for the construction of 3,000 units.
International law considers all settlements in the occupied West Bank as illegal regardless of whether they have Israeli government approval or not.
The three dailies reported presidency spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh as stating the Palestinian Authority (PA) initiated urgent discussions to initiate the necessary procedures to fight Israeli settlement construction.
Secretary general of the PLO’s Executive Committee, Saeb Erekat, was reported in al-Ayyam as decrying the silence of US President Donald Trump’s administration regarding the Israeli settlements announcement.
Al-Quds and al-Ayyam reported the US administration warned the PA that suing Israel in the International Criminal Court (ICC) over settlement construction would trigger severe punitive steps.
On the other hand, al-Ayyam highlighted escalating tensions between Israeli Prison Service (IPS) and Palestinian detainees in Israel’s Nafha prison in the Naqab desert in its main front page news item.
The dailies said IPS assaulted Palestinian detainees in Nafha after two detainees allegedly cut with a blade two prison guards.
IPS reportedly forced Palestinian detainees to fully undress, and ordered them to leave their cells “while naked in the cold weather, also searching and destroying their personal belongings and cutting the electricity off.”
The three dailies said Israel seized over 36 dunums of land belonging to the Palestinian village of Bardala, northeast of Tubas, in the northern Jordan Valley.
Al-Quds added Israeli forces leveled Palestinian farmlands, southwest of Bethlehem, and delivered demolition notices for residential tents belonging to Palestinian families in the northern Jordan Valley.
The dailies also reported President Mahmoud Abbas started an official visit to Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was reported in al-Quds as stating that the invitation to host talks between Abbas and Netanyahu was still on.
He was also reported in al-Hayat al-Jadida as stating Russia was still exerting efforts to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Al-Hayat al-Jadida spotlighted Jordanian King Abdullah’s warning against the consequences on the region of relocating the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
He was reported as warning the US Administration’s decision to relocate the embassy would have consequences that would undermine opportunities for peace and reaching the two-state solution.
K. F./M.K.
