RAMALLAH, February 25, 2017 (WAFA) – The visit by President Mahmoud Abbas to Lebanon and meetings with officials there as well as the weekly anti-occupation, anti-settlements protests in the West Bank were the highlight of the Saturday Palestinian Arabic dailies.
The papers highlighted a statement by Abbas in which he said that Lebanon endured and sacrificed a great deal for Palestine.
Abbas started on Thursday a three-day visit to Lebanon during which he met President Michel Aoun and a large number of Lebanese officials.
The dailies also said dozens of people suffocated from inhaling tear gas when Israeli soldiers cracked down on the weekly protests against the Israeli occupation and its settlement projects in the occupied West Bank.
In Hebron, the army attacked and dispersed a protest in the city center marking 23 years since an Israeli settler opened fire and killed 23 Palestinians as they were worshipping in the Ibrahimi mosque on a Ramadan morning.
The protesters were also calling for removing the extremists Jewish settlers from the heart of Hebron and for opening streets the Israeli army had closed for Palestinian residents while allowing settlers free access to these roads.
Al-Hayat al-Jadida said Fatah and other civil society groups denounced a conference to be held in Istanbul on Saturday that they said aims at undermining the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.
In its editorial, al-Hayat al-Jadida talked about the Istanbul conference. It denounced it saying the conference will not serve Palestinian interest but rather it is going to divide it further.
The paper reported on the criticism of the United Nations Human Rights Council of the Israeli court verdict against the killer soldier who shot dead an injured and incapacitated Palestinian in Hebron last year. The council described the sentence of 18 months in prison as very lenient and unacceptable.
Al-Quds said an Israeli military checkpoint outside Qalqilya held the car of Minister of Waqf and Religious Affairs Yousef Ideis for more than an hour, searched it and seized equipment before letting the minister go following intervention by the Palestinian military coordinating office.
It said Palestine’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Manual Hassassian, met with the British official for the Middle East to discuss with him Britain’s plans to hold an event marking 100 years for the infamous Balfour Declaration when the British government promised a homeland for Europe’s Jews in the sovereign Arab country of Palestine.
The paper reported on an article by Balfour’s grandson who said that rise in anti-Semitism around the world was due to Israel’s failure to resolve its conflict with the Palestinian people.
Al-Quds printed an interview with Saeb Erekat, PLO secretary general, after participating in a conference in Cairo in which he said Egypt is doing all it can to reconcile the Palestinian groups.
It also reported on the Israeli ban of a Human Rights Watch employee from entering its territory as well as the United Nations rejecting Israeli claims that one of its Gaza employees was named as member of Hamas politburo.
Al-Ayyam said 50,000 Muslims attended the Friday prayer at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
It also quoted a Hamas official saying the two-state solution had ended and there is no alternative for one state of Palestine.
The paper also reported on the Israeli army closure of roads leading into the village of Hizma, east of Jerusalem, turning it into “a big prison,” as came in the headline.
M.K.
