RAMALLAH, August 13, 2017 (WAFA) – The meeting of the PLO’s Executive Committee which discussed convening the Palestinian National Council (PNC), the PLO’s parliament, was the highlight of the Sunday issue of the three Palestinian Arabic dailies.
The main front page headline in al-Ayyam said that the Executive Committee decided to continue consultations and dialogue with the factions to hold a session for the PNC in the nearest time possible.
While the main front page story and headline in al-Hayat al-Jadida quoted President Mahmoud Abbas telling a delegation of teachers who are getting ready to go to work in Kuwait that “the future in open for us to reach our goals,” the second main front page headline focused on the Executive Committee meeting repeating the headline from al-Ayyam.
Al-Quds also reported on the PLO meeting even though not as its main front page story but decided to highlight in the headline on this subject the committee’s call on the International Criminal Court to immediately investigate Israel’s settlement activities and its 2014 war on Gaza.
The main front page story in al-Quds focused on US peace mediation between the Palestinians and Israel, quoting whom it described as a ranking US official saying that US President Donald Trump is committed to push forward the peace process and that he has held consultations on this issue with his senior advisors.
The local news received a portion of space on the front page of the dailies, which reported on the alleged attack in Jerusalem by a Palestinian woman who was apprehended unharmed, the placement of a number of mobile homes in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, mainly around the Nablus area, and Israeli army raids on homes in Beit Fajjar in the Bethlehem area.
Al-Quds reported on the situation in al-Walajeh, a village southwest of Jerusalem where Israel plans to demolish more than two dozen Palestinian homes under the pretext they were built without permit even though most of them has been there for decades. It said the village’s 3000 residents are being gradually pushed out of their homes and land so that Israel would annex the land without the people.
It said Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III has declared his intention to go to the Israeli High Court to appeal a ruling by the Jerusalem District Court regarding church property in Jerusalem. The District Court has transferred a large area of the church property to Jewish settlement groups.
The paper also said the European Union has called on Israel to reconsider its decision to evict the Palestinian Shamasneh family from its home in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where the family has been living for decades, for the benefit of Jewish settlers.
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