Israeli warplanes fired on a Gaza City neighborhood early Friday, lightly injuring two Palestinian fighters.

The airstrike on the Zeitoun neighborhood injured two militants who were evacuated to hospital, emergency services’ spokesman Adham Abu Salmiya said. Their identities and affiliations were not immediately identified.

An Israeli army statement said the warplanes hit “two terror activity sites in the northern Gaza Strip…in response to the rockets fired at Israel.”

Three rockets fired from Gaza landed in southern Israel on Thursday evening, and two projectiles early Friday, without causing injuries of damage.

The armed wing of the Popular Resistance Committees said in a statement on Friday it had launched projectiles at southern Israel early on Friday.

The Nasser Salah al-Din brigades said they fire was in response to Israel’s violations of the sanctity of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, and Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians.

On Sunday, Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip injured six people, including a one-year-old infant.

Ma’an

Israel has escalated its attacks on the Gaza Strip in the past few days, killing two Palestinians and injuring several others in Israeli airstrikes that targeted civilian areas.

An Israeli army unit of four Israeli bulldozers and five tanks entered Gaza today and raided Palestinian land to the east of Rafah, razing the area under heavy military air cover and sporadic shooting, according to local sources.

Israeli bombardment attacks were regenerated on Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza in the morning. The attacks targeted a group of civilians, causing several deaths and injuries.  Locals said Israeli attacks are leaving no chance for a ceasefire.

The air raids happened less than an hour after the assassination of Al-Quds Brigades military wing of Islamic Jihad movement member, Rumah Al-Hassani, in an air raid that targeted central Gaza strip.

Palestine News and Info Agency & PNN

One hour ago, a loud explosion was heard throughout Gaza.

Israeli warplanes are in Gaza skies and one rocket was shot. Meanwhile, gunboats located in the Mediterranean Sea and tanks on the borders fire on Gaza.

The site of the explosion was the shores of  Nusairat neighborhood in central Gaza.

Further explosions being reported in Rafah area. This is a result of Egyptian forces exploding a tunnel in Southern Gaza Strip near the Brazil neighborhood.

One inury is reported, the woman is being transported to a local hospital.

Multiple house fires are being reported in the Nusairat camp.

Gaza Strip (Pal Telegraph)

A couple hours after midnight Gaza was shaken by a huge explosion, turns out that the Israeli F16s and other warplanes bombed “Badr” security HQ. that belongs to Hamas which is located in Al Naser neighborhood in Gaza city, its noteworthy that this time security HQ. was bombed countless times before.

A few minutes later a huge explosion rocked Northern Gaza, Israeli warplanes bombed a second security HQ. that belongs to Hamas there. Then they moved south and started bombing the tunnels area in Rafah city, Southern Gaza.

Medics reported that two children were injured due to those Israeli nightly attacks on Gaza.

The Palestinian resistance fired 2 grad rockets earlier from Gaza into Israel, caused no injuries, so Israel used this incident as a pretext for their attacks.

Israel never needed an excuse to bomb Gaza, they didn’t have or need one when they started the vicious assault on Gaza back in 2008-2009 that lasted for nearly one month and left thousands of martyrs, injured, demolished houses and destruction behind.

Omar Ghraieb

Israeli warplanes Tuesday carried out several airstrikes targeting northern Gaza Strip and a smuggling tunnel in Rafah city. No injuries were reported.

According to local sources, Israeli warplanes type “F16″bombarded a site in Beit Lahya town, northern Gaza Strip, and a smuggling tunnel in Rafah city inflicting great financial looses.

Israeli airstrikes caused a state of panic among civilians who were asleep on that time.

Meanwhile, Israeli gunboats opened fire at Palestinian fishermen off Rafah shore forcing them to leave the sea.

Israeli army said that one Israeli woman was injured yesterday after Palestinian militants fired a rocket on the city of Ashkelon.

Palestine Telegraph

Seven people including four children were injured in the northern Gaza Strip city of Beit Hanoun when Israeli jets fired a missile at a target near a residential area overnight, a medical official said.

Gaza emergency and ambulance services official Adham Abu Salmiya said all the victims were members of the Zaanin family. They were evacuated to Beit Hanoun Hospital for treatment.

Abu Salmiya highlighted that over the past two weeks, three people were killed and more than 20 were injured in Israeli raids on the coastal enclave. Among the injured, he added, were six children and two girls.

Israeli forces have been launching strikes on a daily basis over the past four days.

Meanwhile, three so-called Qassam rockets fired from the Gaza Strip on Saturday night hit open areas in the western Negev, Israeli media reported Sunday morning.

There were no reports of injuries or damage.

The first projectile exploded at around 1 a.m. within the Ashkelon Coast Regional Council, the Israeli news site Ynet reported. Two additional projectiles landed in the Shaar Hanegev Regional Council.

On Saturday, a Palestinian man was injured by an Israeli airstrike on northern Gaza. Two days earlier, an airstrike killed one man and injured five others in the tunnel area near Egypt.

Israeli army officials and Palestinian security sources said the most recent raid targeted a group of militants as they prepared to launch a homemade projectile toward Israel from the east of Gaza City.

The commander of Israel’s army Benny Gantz held an urgent meeting Friday to discuss the situation along the border with Gaza and “practical steps” to end projectile fire, news reports said.

Israel’s Hebrew-language daily Maariv said the meeting was attended by senior commanders of the Israeli army in various wings including the commander of the southern region.

The army officials said they held Hamas “fully responsible for this situation,” allegedly for deliberately failing to stop the firing of projectiles into southern Israel after a sharp decrease of several months.

The past few days of rocket fire and airstrikes represent the first significant recurrence of violence in the area since April, when airstrikes killed 19 Palestinians after a missile fired from Gaza killed a teenager.

Ma’an

Israeli occupation forces on Tuesday opened massive fired at the eastern borders of Gaza Strip.

Witnesses told that Israeli military vehicles and towers stationed at the border fence opened fire at agricultural lands in the east of Gaza strip. No causalities were reported.

Security sources attributed the heavy shooting by Israeli forces to the foggy atmosphere in that area.

Pointing out that Israeli forces regularly and deliberately shoot in such atmosphere in fear over military attacks by Palestinian fighters at Israel .

Witnesses told that Israeli warplanes type”F16” yesterday carried out night raids and fired light bombs, terrifying many citizens who were asleep on that time.

www.paltelegraph.com

Israel will hold up an $89 million cash transfer to the Palestinian Authority [PA] planned for this week because of a new unity deal between rival Palestinian factions.

“Israel wants assurances that any money transferred to the Palestinians will not reach the militant Hamas organisation, which is set to become part of the Palestinian government,” Yuval Steinitz, the Israeli finance minister, said on Sunday.

“I think the burden of proof is on the Palestinians, to make it certain, to give us guarantees that money delivered by Israel is not going to the Hamas, is not going to a terrorist organisation, is not going to finance terror operations against Israeli citizens,” he said.

Israel had threatened sanctions last week in response to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s surprise announcement of a unity deal with Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip and is shunned by the West for its hostility towards the Jewish state.

According to a report in the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, the Israeli officials would also cancel talks with the Abbas administration aimed at updating the tax transfer mechanism which provides it with $1 billion to $1.4 billion annually – two-thirds of PA budget.

Israel collects some tax and customs fees for the Palestinians under the peace agreements of the 1990s.

Israel has held up cash transfers several times in the past decade, citing concerns that the money was being used to fund attacks against Israelis.

Deal raises concern

There was no immediate Palestinian reaction to the Israeli move.

The deal signed between Fatah and Hamas is meant to lead immediately to a transitional government and new elections within one year.

Israel suspends transfer of $89m to Palestinian Authority in view of recent unity deal between Fatah and Hamas.

The Israeli government said the deal rules out the renewal of deadlocked peace talks and threatens Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation in the West Bank.

The agreement “should worry not only all Israeli citizens but all those across the world who want to see peace between us and our Palestinian neighbours”, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister said on Sunday.

Israel has also expressed its concern to the UN about the deal.

Ehud Barak, the defence minister, on Saturday told Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, of “Israel’s concern” over the unity accord struck on Wednesday between Hamas and Fatah, according to a statement.

One-fourth of the Palestinian population residing in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) has been put behind the bars by the Israeli government, making Palestinians the most imprisoned people in the world, according to a new report.
Besides, Israel is the only state worldwide that has child prisoners under the age of 18. They number 280. “Their living conditions are harsh. Prison administration refuses to allow mature prisoners to join them. Israel uses all sorts of punishment and tortures against child prisoners to recruit them as spies. They threaten them with rape and other forms of violence,” contends the report by ‘Friends of Humanity International’.

“There is no one single family that didn’t experience the arrest of one of its members. The majority of those detained are male, which constitutes over 40 percent of the total male Palestinian population” in the OPT, says the report titled ‘A year of Jails storming and attempts to weaken prisoners determination’.

“Since Israel began its illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, more than 650,000 Palestinians have been detained, representing approximately twenty percent of the current total Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories,” notes the report released in Vienna on April 22, 2011.

The report points out that Israel has illegally detained Palestinian men, women and children through an extensive and systematic set of regulations that control every aspect of Palestinian life. They restrict or deny their basic human rights.

Authors of the report, Fuad Al Khoffash and Ghassan Obaid, call a spade a spade: “The conditions of the prisons and treatment of prisoners are horrendous, violating numerous international laws. The Israeli military, which governs the Occupied Territories, constantly changes or issues new military orders that are often unknown to local populations until implemented. Palestinian prisoners are then subject to Israeli military tribunals, which rarely follow required international standards of fair trial. Palestinians not only live under an illegal occupation, but also under an unstable and unjust system of law and order.”

The majority of Palestinian political prisoners are charged with offenses under Israeli military orders of which there are some 1,500 governing the West Bank and 1,400 enforced in Gaza before Israel’s withdrawal from that area in 2005.

These military regulations carry a broad definition of “security” and they ban, amongst other things, political expression. For example, according to Military order 101 it is forbidden to conduct a protest march or meeting (grouping of ten or more where the subject concerns or is related to politics) “without permission of the Military Commander”. The distribution of political articles and pictures with “political connotations” is also forbidden under the same order.

Al Khoffash and Obaid add: “Israeli policies towards its prisoners routinely violate international law. Torture has become an endemic problem within Israeli prisons and increasing numbers of children are beginning to end up in Israeli jails. These general trends are areas of growing concern as they have remained unabated for decades.”

While there is a general problem facing Palestinians in Israeli prisons, the report provides details of the suffering faced by Palestinian prisoners incarcerated by Israel.

The report says: “Year 2010 was not an ordinary year for Palestinian prisoners. Yet, if there is a common feature to describe the reality of the movement of prisoners and the captives, we could label it as ‘A year of Jails storming and attempts to Weaken Prisoners Determination’.”

Al Khoffash and Obaid add: “The In 2010 there was also the largest movement of prison leaders of Palestinian detainees in an effort to disrupt prisoners and create a state of instability within prisons. This policy intended to hinder the work of Prisoners Movement, to plan and organize their struggle within jails such as protests and hunger strikes.

“The year also witnessed a sharp decrease in the number of prisoners in Israeli jails which was 6500 persons distributed in dozens of Israelis jails. The year included various random campaigns to arrest people in the West Bank cities and villages. Such campaigns were carried almost daily. Indeed there are daily operations storming houses, villages and towns in return of releases of some prisoners. It seems Israel is trying to send a message pointing out that no Palestinian is immune and protected from these campaigns and operations.”

The report has gathered some shocking information: The prisoners were tortured and their belongings were confiscated. They were hit, beaten, including with electric sticks and sprayed with tear gas. They were separated individually or moved to other departments in the jail, not dissimilar to what happened to those in Hadarim detention centre.

“In Hadarim centre, prisoners in division three were moved to division five. Walls between divisions were demolished while prisoners were deprived from taking electric equipments with them. Prisoners were corralled and put in a detention which lacked any basic provisions required in every prison. All this happened under a pretext of searching for mobile phones.”

The same incident happened in Nafha detention centre, located in the desert which the Israeli army stormed more than ten times. On every occasion, says the report, confrontation took place between prison guards and prisoners, resulting in bloody attacks against prisoners and their leaders.

On one occasion, an Israeli officer, at Nafha detention (which host Palestinian prisoners of highest sentences from Gaza Strip), phoned the wife of one of the prisoners with abuse to evoke response, while searching his private belongings. The incident caused enormous damage and has pushed the Management of the prison to apologize and provide further assurance that an open investigation in the manner in which prison cells are raided and prisoners restrained by carried out.

“The Israeli state and Prison Service facility has escalated their humiliating and torture tactics. Rarely a week passes before another raid or attack against prisoner’s chambers. Such conditions made the lives of prisoners extremely difficult, forced to live in continuous tension fearing frequent and untimely attacks,” the authors of the report note. (IDN-InDepthNews/26.04.2011)

Three children were injured by flying glass as Israeli F16 fighter planes flew six raids against the Gaza Strip overnight, hospital staff, witnesses and Hamas officials said Friday.

The three children, aged two, four and 11, were hit by flying glass in a raid on the Sabra district, in the western part of Gaza City, said Moawiya Hassanein, head of the Palestinian emergency services in Gaza.

Three Israeli air strikes targeted an area west of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza.

A fourth raid destroyed a workshop in the refugee camp of Nusseirat, in central Gaza.

In two other air raids, Israeli fighters targeted points in the west of Gaza City, completely destroying a small dairy factory in the Sabra district, said witnesses.

The attacks were carried out by F16 fighters, the witnesses said.

Israel’s armed forces have launched regular air raids on the Gaza Strip in recent weeks, responding to repeated rocket attacks into Israel from Gaza-based militants.

In recent days, Israeli ground forces have also clashed with Palestinian militants along the border with Israel.

On Tuesday, a Palestinian teenager was killed and several others were wounded as Israeli troops fired on protestors near the Gaza border.

The incident happened as Israeli Arabs and Palestinians marked “Land Day”, the annual commemoration of Israel’s killing of six Arab citizens during a 1976 protest against land confiscations.

And an Israeli officer and soldier were killed during fierce clashes last weekend.

Following the deaths, finance minister Yuval Steinitz, from the governing rightwing Likud party, told public radio: “Sooner or later we will liquidate the military regime of the pro-Iranian Hamas which controls the Gaza Strip.”

The present surge in violence is the worst since the end of the 22-day Israeli assault on the territory launched in December 2008 that killed some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.

Artist Robert Ballagh, who designed the set for Riverdance , is boycotting an upcoming tour to Israel by Riverdance in support of justice for the Palestinian people.

In an open letter, Ballagh has also said he will donate any royalties due to him for performances by Riverdance in Israel to the fund for an Irish boat, which is taking part in an flotilla of vessels that hopes to break the “illegal and inhuman blockade” of Gaza.

“I, along with many other Irish creative and performing artists, signed a cultural boycott pledge not to visit Israel. This was a positive response to the call by Palestinian filmmakers, artists and cultural organisations for a cultural boycott of Israel. I believe that this non-violent cultural boycott will contribute to the struggle for justice for the Palestinian people.”

“Because I have signed up to support the cultural boycott I will not be travelling to Israel with Riverdance ,” he said.

Ballagh said his decision to support the boycott was inspired by a meeting with Nelson Mandela, who told him the sporting and cultural boycott of South Africa was an essential weapon in the struggle against apartheid.

In a second open letter published today, the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign says the Riverdance “farewell tour”, which includes events in three Israeli cities, violates a call for boycotts issued by 170 Palestinian civil society organisations in 2005 and a subsequent cultural boycott issued by filmmakers and artists.