RAMALLAH, February 18, 2017 (WAFA) – Israeli seizure of private Palestinian land for the benefit of settlers and its army’s crackdown on peaceful protests in the West Bank were the highlight of the front page stories in the three Palestinian Arabic dailies on Saturday.
The papers also highlighted a father’s stabbing to death of his three children in Rafah, Gaza Strip, before setting his house and himself on fire. The father, believed to have mental problems, was reported in al-Ayyam daily as in critical condition in hospital while al-Hayat al-Jadida said he died in the fire.
The papers said Talal Abu Dbaa, 41, stabbed his two sons, Sabah, 19 and Mohammad, 9, and daughter, Shireen, 12, to death after holding them inside a room in his house then setting the room on fire. Police confirmed that the children died of stab wounds before the house was set on fire.
The papers also said a police officer who was run over by a car in the northern West Bank city of Jenin has died of his wounds. Police said First Lieutenant Mahmoud Ayyaseh, 44, was manning a checkpoint in Jenin when a driver ran him over after he tried to stop him. The driver, from the nearby town of Qabatiya, was driving an “illegal” car. The driver ran away after hitting the police officer but had a road accident outside Jenin where he left the car and tried to get away on foot before he was later arrested.
In Tulkarm, according to the dailies, the family of Mohammad Jallad, 24, who was shot and fatally injured by Israeli soldiers on November 9 after he allegedly attempted to attack them near Nablus, received his body from the Israeli authorities, a week after he was declared dead at an Israeli hospital. Jallad is due to be buried in his Tulkarm hometown on Saturday.
Al-Quds and al-Ayyam said the Israeli authorities seized hundreds of dunums of agricultural land in the village of Jaloud, south of Nablus, in preparation to build a settlement in that area. They said the Israeli military government rezoned that area from agricultural land to housing in order to build the new settlement.
The papers also reported on the weekly anti-settlements protests in the West Bank and the Israeli army crackdown on these peaceful protests.
In Belin, residents and supporters participated in a march marking the 12th anniversary of the start of the protests against the seizure of Belin land and the construction of a settlement and a separation wall on their property. Al-Hayat al-Jadida printed a picture of the protest in Belin.
In Hebron, soldiers attacked a protest demanding an end to the ghetto life thousands of Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied part of the city live under. Al-Quds printed a picture of Hebron activists confronting Israeli border police in the old city.
Al-Ayyam reported, with a picture, on the damage rain water has caused to homes in Jabaliya in the Gaza Strip and said, along with al-Hayat al-Jadida, that President Mahmoud Abbas ordered financial support to the afflicted families.
Al-Hayat al-Jadida printed a report from Jerusalem on Israeli efforts to turn historical Islamic sites, including the Ummayad Palaces adjacent to al-Aqsa Mosque in the Old City, into Jewish areas.
M.K.
