RAMALLAH, February 16, 2018 (WAFA) –Omani Foreign Minister Yousuf bin Alawi’s visit to the occupied Palestinian territories and meeting with President Mahmoud Abbas hit the front page headlines in Palestinian dailies on Friday.

Al-Quds reported that the city of East Jerusalem welcomed its eminent guest, Omani Foreign Minister Yousef bin Alawi.

The dailies explained that bin Alawi visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem.

Al-Quds and al-Ayyam reported bin Alawi calling on Arabs to accept Abbas’ invitation to visit Palestine and Jerusalem.

Abbas was reported in al-Hayat al-Jadida stressing the importance of establishing a multilateral mechanism that should be announced through an international conference based on United Nations (UN) resolutions to salvage the peace process.

On the other hand, al-Ayyam opted to highlight the suppression of an Olive-planting event by Israeli forces in Beita town, south of Nablus, in its main front page news item.

Al-Ayyam and al-Quds reported that Israeli forces injured scores of Palestinians with live rounds and rubber-coated steel bullets during clashes in Beita and Hebron.

Palestinians in Beita were attacked by Israeli troops after they participated in an event to plant olive trees in lands under the risk of confiscation by Israeli occupation authorities for the construction of a settlement outpost.

According to al-Hayat al-Jadida and al-Ayyam, Israeli Jewish settlers assaulted a Palestinian boy in Fandaqumiya village, northwest of Nablus.

They added settlers slashed the tires of several vehicles and spray-painted racist Anti-Palestinian slogans in Yetma village, south of Nablus.

The dailies also reported that Israeli occupation authorities sentenced Omar al-Abed from the Ramallah-district village of Kobar to four life terms.

Al-Abed, 19, was handed four life terms and ordered to pay NIS 1.8 million in compensation for the killing three Israeli settlers in Halamish settlement, northwest of Ramallah, on July 21.

Al-Ayyam and al-Hayat al-Jadida added that Israeli occupation authorities have advanced a plan to construct a settler-only by-pass road and 67 new settler units on Palestinian lands belonging to Bethlehem district.

Al-Quds said UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nockolay Mladenov presented a report to the UN Security Council on the besieged Gaza Strip.

Furthermore, the dailies spotlighted the completion of the installation of a new watchtower checkpoint at Damascus Gate to the Old City of Jerusalem.

Al-Quds said that the US House of Representatives has passed a bill that sanctions Hamas movement. The Hamas Human Shields Prevention Act claims that Hamas has used civilians as human shields in Gaza.

Al-Ayyam said that hundreds of Palestinian held in Israeli administrative detention have launched a campaign to boycott all Israeli courts to oblige Israel to cancel the administrative detention policy.

It added Patriarchs and heads of churches in Jerusalem denounced Israeli occupation authorities’ attempts to impose taxes on church property in Jerusalem.

K.F.