Some 438 youths held in Israeli jails in February, up from 170 last September.

The number of Palestinian minors being held in Israeli prisons has soared following the wave of violence that started last October.

Figures submitted by the Israel Prison Service show that the number of Palestinian minors imprisoned for security-related offenses rose from 170 last September to 438 in February. Some 54 percent of the prisoners, 238, are in custody until the end of the legal process against them. Seven have been detained without being charged, including one who is not yet 16.

Human rights groups say that locking up minors infringes on their rights and increases the chances of their returning to violence or terrorist activity.

While no Palestinian youths younger than 14 were held in prison last September, by February five were incarcerated, including one girl. The number of prisoners aged 16-18 rose from 143 to 324, while the number of prisoners aged 14-16 rose from 27 to 98.

The figures show the growing involvement of girls in violent activity. While only one Palestinian girl was serving a prison sentence in September, 12 girls were in prison by February, including one younger than 14 and six others who were detained until the end of legal proceedings.

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.716006

Aug 16, 2016

Israeli institutions and organizations are reportedly awaiting the regime’s go-ahead for the construction of a so-called “third temple” in place of al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in the Israeli-occupied Jerusalem al-Quds..

The Palestinian-run International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) independent news organization carried the report on Monday, citing Israeli television channels.

Israeli Zionists claim they have the right to build a third temple in line with “scriptural prophecies” to follow the tradition of the first and second ones built in ancient times.

Back in June, Israeli Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Uri Ariel said “the first temple was destroyed in 586 BCE, the second temple in 70 CE,” adding that he wished to see a third one built.

The Israeli media, IMEMC reported, alleged that the Israeli bodies favoring the construction of the temple had received “wide political and popular support.”

“These organizations explained that they are ready to bring the equipment and tools to start building the temple in the place of both the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque,” it added, citing Al Ray Palestinian Media Agency.

“They further stated that the total time needed to accomplish the building is three years, according to their plans,” the media center added.

The al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock are situated in Haram al-Sharif or Temple Mount in Jerusalem al-Quds, which was occupied by Israel in 1967.

The mosque is the third holiest site in Islam after Masjid al-Haram in Mecca and Masjid al-Nabawi in Medina. The site is also holy to Christians and Jews.

In August 2015, Israel imposed restrictions on the entry of Palestinian worshipers into the compound, which is under the administration of Jordan, sparking a fresh wave of tensions with the Palestinians. Over 230 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis in recent months.

According to the agreement signed between the Tel Aviv regime and the Jordanian government after Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem al-Quds in 1967, visits to the compound by Israelis are permitted but non-Muslim worship is prohibited.

On Sunday, fresh clashes erupted near the mosque after over 300 Israeli settlers entered the compound and performed rituals inside in violation of the agreement.

Muslims consider the trespass into the al-Aqsa Mosque yard as part of an Israeli Judaization campaign that targets the holy city of al-Quds and a provocation.

Jordan strongly denounced Israel for attacking Palestinian worshipers at the site and allowing “Zionist extremists” to enter the compound.

Over the past decades, Tel Aviv has been trying to change the demographic makeup of Jerusalem al-Quds by constructing illegal settlements, destroying historical sites and expelling the local Palestinian population.

http://presstv.com/Detail/2016/08/16/480238/Israel-Third-Temple-Aqsa-Dome-of-Roc...

Published on 15 Aug 2016

Video has been released by the BTSELEM human-rights group - apparently showing a Palestinian home built with European Union aid money, being demolished by an Israeli bulldozer. RT's Paula Slier has more

Aug 16, 2016

Israeli forces have shot dead a Palestinian teenager in fresh clashes at a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.

In a statement released on Tuesday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health identified the victim as 17-year-old Muhammad Abu Hashhash, saying he died after being “shot in the chest during clashes with [Israeli forces] in the Fawwar camp,” located near the city of al-Khalil (Hebron).

Meanwhile, Palestinian Red Crescent spokeswoman, Errab Foqoha, told the Ma'an news agency that Abu Hashhash succumbed to injuries sustained when he was "shot with live ammunition in the heart.”

Tuesday’s scuffles in the Fawwar refugee camp also left at least 32 Palestinians injured.

The violence broke out after Israeli forces stormed the camp at Tuesday dawn, ransacked homes and interrogated residents.

The Israeli regime's troops further fired live gunshots, tear gas, and rubber-coated steel bullets at Palestinian youths.

According to witnesses, the Israeli soldiers prevented a Palestinian ambulance, which was carrying an injured Palestinian, from leaving the camp for an hour.

Israeli police and soldiers have come under heavy criticism for “extrajudicial executions” of Palestinian citizens, who did not pose a threat or who could have been detained through non-lethal means.

The occupied territories have been the scene of heightened tensions since August 2015, when Israel imposed restrictions on the entry of Palestinian worshipers into the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem al-Quds in an alleged bid to change the status quo of the Muslim site.

More than 230 Palestinians, including children and women, have lost their lives at the hands of Israeli forces in what is regarded as the third Palestinian Intifada (uprising) since the beginning of last October.

http://presstv.com/Detail/2016/08/16/480327/Plaestine-Israel-Muhammad-Abu-Hashha...

Aug 17, 2016

Footage has emerged of Israeli troops throwing a smoke grenade for no apparent reason at a group of Palestinian civilians sitting outside a coffee shop in the city of Ramallah in the West Bank.

The CCTV footage, recently released by Ramallah News, shows the Israeli army jeep pulling up briefly to where the young men are sitting and then swiftly driving away after throw something at the group.

After a few seconds, the Palestinians can be seen panicking and toppling their chairs before the grenade explodes.

According to the Israeli military, the unprovoked incident “is being reviewed.”

It comes just a few weeks after two armed Israeli soldiers confiscated and threw away an eight-year-old Palestinian girl's bicycle for no apparent reason in the West Bank city of al-Khalil (Hebron).

The incident was captured on the camera of a human rights activist and published over social media.

No charges were pressed against the troops despite an “investigation” into the incident.

The occupied territories have witnessed a fresh bout of tensions ever since the Israeli forces introduced restrictions on the entry of Palestinian worshipers into the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem al-Quds in August 2015.   

http://presstv.com/Detail/2016/08/17/480508/israeli-grenade-palestine-civilians

31st August 2016

By Jonathan Cook in Nazareth

Launched this month, as much of the world was on holiday, Avigdor Lieberman’s plan for the Palestinians – retooling Israel’s occupation – received less attention than it should.

Defence minister since May, Lieberman has been itching to accelerate Israel’s annexation by stealth of the West Bank.

Quislings and propaganda

His “carrot and stick” plan has three components. First, he intends to sideline the Palestinian Authority (PA) in favour of a new local leadership of “notables” hand-picked by Israel.

Preferring to “cut out the middle man”, in his words, he will open a dialogue with supposedly more responsible Palestinians – business people, academics and mayors.

Next, he has established a new communications unit that will speak in Arabic over the heads of the PA in the West Bank and its Hamas rivals in Gaza directly to ordinary Palestinians.

An online campaign – budgeted at USD 2.6 million – will seek to convince them of Israel’s good intentions. The Palestinians’ problems, according to Lieberman, derive from corrupt and inciteful national leaderships, not the occupation.

And finally, his Defence Ministry will produce a map of the West Bank marking in green and red the areas where, respectively, “good” and “bad” Palestinians live.

Sticks and carrots

Collective punishment will be stepped up in towns and villages in red areas, from which Palestinian attacks have been launched. Presumably night raids and house demolitions will increase, while closures will further curtail freedom of movement.

Palestinians in green areas will reap economic rewards for their good behaviour. They will be given work permits in Israel and the settlements, and benefit from development projects, including the creation of Israeli-controlled industrial zones.

This week the Haaretz daily reported that Lieberman is convinced that all the Palestinians can be attributed to Abbas’s “reign of corruption”. In briefings he has stated that the Palestinian leader “doesn’t want to deal with problems of economics and employment. The entire system of management there has failed.”

Lieberman’s longer-term goal is to persuade Palestinians – and the international community – that their aspirations for self-determination are unattainable and counter-productive

Failed old policy

Israel has tried that approach before, as Palestinian officials pointed out. Decades ago, Israel sought to manage the occupation by imposing on the local population Palestinian collaborators, termed “Village Leagues”. Armed by the Israeli military, they were supposed to stamp out political activism and support for the PLO.

By the early 1980s the experiment had to be abandoned, as Palestinians refused to accept the leagues’ corrupt and self-serving rule. An uprising, the first intifada, followed a short time later.

Israel’s agreement to the PA’s creation under the Oslo accords in the mid-1990s was, in part, an acceptance that the occupied territories needed a more credible security contractor, this time in the form of the Palestinian national leadership.

Disorganised resistance

Whatever Lieberman and others claim, the Palestinian leaderships in the West Bank and Gaza are the last parties to blame for the recent wave of Palestinian unrest. The attacks have been mostly carried out spontaneously by “lone wolves”, not organised groups. Many occur in Jerusalem, from which all political activity is barred.

Abbas has described the “security coordination” with Israel as “sacred”, aware that his PA will not survive long if it does not demonstrate its usefulness to Israel. His security services have subdued Palestinian resistance more effectively than the Israeli army.

Bereft of regional allies and a credible strategy, even Hamas has chosen quiet since Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, its lethal wrecking spree in Gaza in 2014. It has kept the tiny coastal enclave locked down. Rocket fire – one of the few remaining, if largely symbolic, ways to confront Israel – all but ceased long ago.

The silence from Gaza was briefly disturbed a week ago by a rocket fired by a small group linked to the self-styled Islamic State. Despite Hamas’s disavowal of the attack, Lieberman demonstrated his new big stick by bombarding government sites in Gaza in a show of force unseen over the past two years.

Sept. 6, 2016

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) -- Several military training sites belonging to different political movements in the Gaza Strip were hit with Israeli artillery shells or machine gun fire in the predawn hours of Tuesday, according to local Palestinian and Israeli army sources, with the army saying they were responding to gunfire directed at Israeli soldiers stationed near the northern border of the besieged coastal enclave.

Palestinian sources told Ma’an that Israeli forces fired at least four artillery shells at sites belonging to the military wings of both the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements, while two other sites were targeted by machine gun fire.

The sources said one of the artillery shells hit a civilian home belonging to the al-Shanti family in the town of Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip close to the border with Israel.

The shell reportedly caused damages to the house, though no injuries were reported.

Israeli artillery fire also reportedly hit the “Palestine” military site east of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip, belonging to the al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing.

The “Khaybar” training site belonging to the al-Qassam Brigades was also hit.

A watchtower belonging to the Islamic Jihad movement’s military wing, the al-Quds Brigades, was also hit.

No casualties or injuries were reported, though the shelling reportedly caused material damages to all the sites that were hit.

An Israeli army spokesperson told Ma’an that the shelling came in response to shots being fired overnight towards Israeli soldiers stationed across the northern border of Gaza. The spokesperson claimed Israeli forces had responded with two artillery shells, rather than the four reported by local sources.

Separately, Israeli troops stationed at watchtowers around the Erez border crossing near Beit Hanoun reportedly shot live fire at a military site used by the security services of the Hamas-run Ministry of Interior in the Gaza Strip.

The shooting caused material damages to the building. No injuries were reported.

Israeli troops also reportedly opened fire at Palestinian agricultural lands and residential areas east of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

The Israeli army claimed in a statement that its troops were responding to to machine gun fire from the Gaza Strip that was being directed towards Israel’s Reim Kibbutz, located just east of the central Gaza Strip.

Tuesday morning’s shelling in the north of Gaza came just two days after Israeli forces hit at least two sites belonging to Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades with artillery shells. No injuries were reported in Sunday’s shelling.

The Israeli army fired missiles into the northern Gaza Strip two weeks ago near the town of Beit Hanoun that left at least five Palestinians injured, after a rocket fired from Gaza fell inside the southern Israeli city of Sderot, with no injuries or damage reported by the Israeli army.

https://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=773015