RAMALLAH, May 5, 2018 (WAFA) – More than 1000 Palestinians were wounded, some of them critical from live gunfire, in another Friday of protests at the Gaza border with Israel as part of the Great Return March, reported the three Palestinian Arabic dailies in their Saturday issue. Luckily, no one was killed this Friday compared to the previous weeks that left 45 Palestinians dead and more than 7000 wounded.
Describing it as “Friday of Palestine’s workers” since it came after the International Labor Day, which coincides on May 1 of every year, the papers highlighted the event on their front page with headlines that went across the entire page and pictures of the Israeli tear gas falling like meteors on the thousands of Palestinians who gathered at the border demanding their right to return to the homeland they were uprooted and displaced from 70 years ago that turned them into refugees.
They said young people broke into Karm Abu Salem/Kerem Shalom crossing between Gaza and Israel and set it on fire, causing damage.
The papers also reported on the protests in the West Bank that went along the protests in Gaza but with lesser intensity and said many Palestinians suffered from tear gas inhalation or wounds from rubber-coated metal bullets.
Al-Ayyam said Jewish settlers burnt down crops in Masafer Yatta in the south of the West Bank while Israeli authorities ordered demolition of retaining wall and stop work on a house near Bethlehem.
In other news, the three papers said President Mahmoud Abbas chaired the first meeting of the new executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which was named at the conclusion of the 23rd session of the Palestinian National Council that ended four days of meetings in Ramallah early Friday.
Al-Hayat al-Jadida and al-Ayyam quoted Abbas stressing at the meeting the necessity to keep the door open for national reconciliation.
They also said Abbas stressed his respect for the Jewish religion and he condemned the Holocaust.
Al-Ayyam had a report by its Jerusalem correspondent with the headline: “What does it mean to empower the Central Council with the powers of the National Council?”
As Palestinians get ready to mark the 70th anniversary for the Nakba, catastrophe, that befell them following their forced displacement from their home and land in Palestine in 1948, al-Quds said Al-Aqsa Mosque Imam warned in his Friday sermon at the holy place of a new “nakba” that could befall the Palestinian people.
The paper also quoted the spokesman for the Japanese prime minister telling it that Tokyo supports the two-state solution and an agreement on Jerusalem through negotiations.
It quoted the Israeli Maariv newspaper saying that the American so-called deal of the century, which has not been made public yet, calls on Israel to turn over sovereignty of four East Jerusalem neighborhoods to the Palestinian Authority.
Al-Hayat al-Jadida said a group of Palestinian cyclists went to Qalandia Israeli military checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah to protest the Italian Giro d’Italia bicycle race in occupied East Jerusalem and to show that when hundreds of cyclists from all over the world can come to Jerusalem, they, local Palestinians, are not allowed to do that.
It said the Ministry of Information condemned Hamas holding of Palestine TV crew in Gaza.
It said the Palestinian national football team came in a difficult group in the Asia Cup games along with Australia, last year’s winner, Syria and Jordan.
M.K.
