State of Palestine
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Media Unit
Palestine Press For Today
- Israel says Palestinians hypocritical for joining ICC
- Israeli forces detain lawmaker, PFLP member Khalida Jarrar
- Israeli Navy Attacks Gaza Fishermen Sailing Within Allowed Fishing Zone
- Isolated ‘Megiddo’ Prisoners Warn of Open-Ended Hunger Strike
- Israeli Police to Evacuate Only Home to Jerusalem Family under Ownership Allegations
- Israel says Palestinians hypocritical for joining ICC
JERUSALEM (Ma'an)-- Israel denounced the Palestinian decision to join the International Criminal Court in order to seek to prosecute Israeli officials as hypocritical on Wednesday.
"The Palestinian decision to join the ICC to initiate judicial proceedings against Israel is political, cynical and hypocritical," the foreign ministry said.
Palestine formally joined the ICC Wednesday in a closed-door ceremony at the court's headquarters in The Hague.
"The government of the Palestinian Authority, which is associated with the deadly terrorist Hamas committing war crimes... is the last to be able to threaten legal action" before the court, a statement said.
Unilateral Palestinian actions such as joining the ICC are "violations of the principles established between the two parties with the support of the international community to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict," it added.
Exasperated after decades of failed negotiations with Israel and no prospect of achieving statehood anytime soon, the move to join the ICC came as Palestinians have been waging a campaign for recognition by several international bodies.
Recently reelected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed a Palestinian state would not be established under his watch, verbally affirming what many Palestinians saw as an unspoken policies already carried out by Netanyahu for years.
In addition to failed negotiation, the decision was also made in response to an Israeli military court system that promotes impunity for members of the Israeli forces rather than effectively enforcing the law.
"Palestine seeks justice, not vengeance," Palestinian foreign minister Riad Malki said after receiving a symbolic copy of the Rome Statute at the ceremony.
"Israel should join us in becoming a member of the International Criminal Court," Malki said.
ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda in January launched a preliminary investigation into possible war crimes during last year's Gaza war.
The war between Palestinian militant groups and Israel left more than 2,100 Palestinians dead, mostly civilians, according to Palestinian and UN officials. On the Israeli side, 66 soldiers and six civilians were killed. Over 100,000 Gazans lost their homes, and large swathes of the coastal territory were left in ruins.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "should not be afraid... if Israel has any complaints (against us) they should join and present their case to the ICC," added Maliki.
Palestinian groups have expressed a sense of indifference to Israeli threats of bringing Palestinian actors to the ICC in retaliation.
Human rights group Amnesty International recently released a report accusing Hamas of war crimes during last summer's war. In a response last week, the Hamas said that it is the right of Palestinians to defend themselves against both the ongoing Israeli occupation and Israeli military offenses.
"War crimes have clear specifications, according to the Rome Statute, that do not in any way apply to the Palestinian resistance, which was, is, and will defend its people."
- Israeli forces detain lawmaker, PFLP member Khalida Jarrar
RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces detained Palestinian lawmaker and member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Khalida Jarrar after raiding her home early Thursday.
Israeli forces surrounded her house in the al-Irsal neighborhood al-Bireh near Ramallah, confiscating two computers and a mobile phone after searching the home.
Jarrar's daughter Yaffa told Ma'an that Israeli forces came around 3:00 a.m., demanded to see her mother, and informed her that she was under arrest.
Head of the Palestinian Prisoner's Society, Fares Qaddura, denounced Jarrar's arrest as a "revengeful act" in response to her refusal to agree to the Israeli army's decision to deport her from the Ramallah district to Jericho.
The Israeli authorities had issued the order last August. She did not respond to the order and the Israeli authorities dropped it some two months later.
At the time, prisoner rights group Addameer said that Jarrar was told she would be confined to Jericho for the next six months because she was a "threat to the security of the area."
Following the initial order, the group also noted that the raid pointed to the fact that the Palestinian Authority was complicit in her arrest, as any raid on areas in Area A -- the approximately 20 percent of the West Bank technically under full Palestinian control as a result of the Oslo Accords -- had to be taken with their coordination.
"By allowing Israeli occupying forces to enter Ramallah means that in effect the so-called 'security co-ordination' between Palestinian Authority security forces and Israeli occupying forces allowed for the expulsion of an elected representative of the Palestinian people, an elected representative who has continuously called for an end to such 'coordination,'" the group said.
An Israeli army spokeswoman did not have any immediate information but told Ma'an she would look into Thursday morning's incident.
Jarrar is an active member in several women committees as well as the prisoners' committee in the legislative council.
Her detainment came just one day after Muna Qadan, political affiliate of Islamic Jihad, was sentenced to 70 months in prison by Israeli authorities for alleged illegal political activity.
The majority of Palestinian political organizations are considered illegal by Israel, and association with such parties is often used as grounds for imprisonment, according to Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association Addameer.
- Israeli Navy Attacks Gaza Fishermen Sailing Within Allowed Fishing Zone
GAZA, (WAFA) – Israeli navy Wednesday attacked Palestinian fishermen’s boats despite sailing within the unilaterally designated fishing zone, according to WAFA correspondent.
Israeli navy opened gunfire toward fishermen boats sailing offshore As-sodanyieh area to the northwest of the Gaza Strip despite sailing within the allowed six-nautical miles, causing large financial damages to the boats. However no human loses or injuries were reported as fishermen managed to sail back to shore fast.
To be noted, Israeli navy targets Palestinian fishermen and farmlands along the border almost on daily basis in a blatant breach of the Egyptian brokered truce agreement reached on august 26 of 2014 following almost 51 one days of bloody attacks on the strip.
On March 7, Israeli navy attacked fishermen, critically injuring Tawfiq Abu Rayyala in the abdomen, who shortly after succumbed to his wounds.
The ceasefire deal stipulated that Israel would immediately ease the blockade imposed on the strip and expand the fishing zone off Gaza's coast, allowing fishermen to sail as far as six nautical miles from shore, and would continue to expand the area gradually.
Israel has however failed to do so, repeatedly violating the ceasefire deal through opening fire on Palestinian fishermen within the fishing zone and reducing their intake.
Continuing the Cairo-brokered talks on the other key issues was repeatedly postponed in the wake of November attacks against Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai Peninsula.
Israel has imposed a tightened blockade since 2007 after Hamas won the democratic legislative elections and took over power in the strip.
The current six-nautical-mile fishing zone falls drastically short of the twenty nautical miles allocated to Palestinian fishermen in the 1993 Oslo Accords.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces arrested two Gaza residents at the Israeli-controlled Beit Hanoun – Erez – border crossing, north of Gaza. They were identified as Said Abu Talha 55, and Adel Aby Tahla, 40.
- Isolated ‘Megiddo’ Prisoners Warn of Open-Ended Hunger Strike
RAMALLAH, (WAFA) – Nine Palestinian prisoners who are currently in solitary confinement in the Israeli Megiddo prison recently warned to launch a hunger strike in protest of their situation, said the Palestinian Authority’s Prisoners’ Affairs Committee.
The committee stated that the prison’s administration forces the prisoners to meet their families and lawyers with their legs chained, in addition to being forced to solitary imprisonment in very narrow cells.
Last December, about 100 Palestinian political prisoners started an open-ended hunger strike against the practice of solitary confinement, as well as in support of sick prisoners who suffer severe medical negligence by the Israeli Prison Service.
Palestinian prisoners in solitary confinement are held in foul-smelling and firmly sealed cells that even lack the basic humanitarian requirements, where prisoners are forced to stay all the time in their cells with no contact with the outside world, with the exception of prison guards.
Solitary confinement in Israeli prisons has been a frequent motive, besides administrative detention and medical negligence, for launching individual or mass hunger strikes.
The number of sick prisoners detained in Israeli jails has reached 1500, 80 prisoners of whom are suffering from serious health complications and do not receive the necessary treatment; they suffer from malignant diseases, paralysis, and disabilities, in addition to cases of mental illness and neurological disorder.
- Israeli Police to Evacuate Only Home to Jerusalem Family under Ownership Allegations
JERUSALEM, (WAFA) – A large Israeli police force Wednesday raided Abu Nab family’s home in the East Jerusalem’s town of Silwan and started to empty the house from the owner’s furniture under the pretext that the house belonged to a Jewish family before the 1967.
WAFA correspondent in Jerusalem reported on one of the locals witnessing the Israeli police forced eviction of Abu Nab family in the cold weather. He said police broke into the house and began to take out furniture, vandalizing many pieces due to their careless conduct.
Family member Nasir Abu Nab told WAFA the Israeli authorities ordered his family to pay rent which amounts to 280,000 NIS for the past 14 years they have lived in the house, claiming that the house used to belong to a Jewish Yemeni family prior to the 1967 conflict.
He said the family assigned a lawyer to follow up on the case, and the eviction came as a surprise. According to Abu Nab’s testimony Israeli police threatened to come back and empty the rest of the furniture, even if the case was not settled soon.
To be noted, the house is located between the illegal settlement outposts of Beit Asal and Beit Yonatan, where a number of Palestinian-owned homes were taken over by settlers.
While settlers are supported by the court and the Israeli authorities to claim ownership of homes which were allegedly owned by Jewish families, Palestinian families which were evicted from their homes in 1948 are not entitled to return to their homes or claim ownership.
Settlements are illegal under international law as they violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits the transfer of the occupying power’s civilian population into occupied territory.