Hebron man to die for selling land to Israel

PA military court sentences man to death by hanging for selling land to Israelis

Date: 28 / 04 / 2009  Time:  13:54

[Ma'anImages] Hebron – Ma’an – A special Palestinian Authority (PA) military court in Hebron in the southern West Bank sentenced a Palestinian man to death by hanging after he was found guilty of selling land to Israeli settlers on Tuesday. This is the first time a Palestinian court has handed down a conviction for treason in a case relating to land sales. The suspect is from the Hebron area. Presiding over tribunal was judge Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Al-Masri. The jurists were the judge Major Mihriz Atyani, and Major Nabil Jabir. Head of military prosecution in Hebron Issa Amr attended the sentencing as well as the military prosecuting attorney in Hebron Hani Al-Heih, the court’s clerk Abdul-Rahman Fannun. Lawyers defending the suspect were also present. The military court held a hearing session on 21 April, on the charge of “leaking lands to Israel.” The PA announced just over a week ago that it is investigating Palestinians who sell land to settlers. PA courts have convicted Palestinians for collaborating with Israel in the past, usually for providing information about resistance fighters to the Israeli intelligence services. These convictions are based on the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Revolutionary Code. ***Get breaking news from Palestine: Click here to follow Ma’an on Twitter.

U.S. pledges $900 million in aid to Palestine

U.S. offers $300 million to Gaza, rest to Abbas

Source: Reuters Foundation

Date: 01 Mar 2009

- U.S. to split funds between Gaza and Palestinian Authority

- Europeans seek more flexibility with Hamas

- U.S. says Quartet conditions remain (Adds details on amount, quotes, European diplomat’s comments)

By Sue Pleming

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt, March 1 (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will pledge $900 million for the Palestinians at a donors’ conference in Egypt, but only a third of that is earmarked for Gaza, a U.S. official said on Sunday.

State Department spokesman Robert Wood said the pledge at Monday’s conference amounted to $300 million to meet “urgent” humanitarian needs in Hamas-ruled Gaza after Israel’s military invasion in December, and would be funnelled through U.N. and other organizations.

“Hamas is not getting any of this money,” Wood told reporters in the Egyptian coastal resort, where Clinton arrived late on Sunday on the first leg of a week-long trip to the Middle East and Europe.

About $200 million of the U.S. pledge would help cover budget shortfalls of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) and the remainder was for economic reforms, security and private sector projects run by the PA, said Wood.

Monday’s conference is aimed at raising funds to help with the post-conflict recovery of Gaza after Israel’s offensive, but Washington also wants it to bolster President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, which governs the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

“We have to shore up the Palestinian Authority,” said Wood.

How much of the U.S. contribution will ultimately materialize is unclear as the funds have to be agreed by the U.S. Congress, which is more focused on fixing an economic crisis, and suspicious that some of the aid will reach Hamas.

U.S. aid contributions are further complicated by reconciliation talks among Palestinian factions, including Hamas, which the United States brands a terrorist group.

The United States and its so-called Quartet partners in Middle East peacemaking — Russia, the United Nations and the European Union — have demanded that Hamas recognize Israel, sign on to Israeli-Palestinian accords and renounce violence before it can be accepted as a partner.

FLEXIBILITY?

But a senior European diplomat said some European countries were looking at how they could be “more flexible” by dealing with a potential Palestinian government that included Hamas, if the wide rift between the two factions could be bridged.

Without a unified government, funds raised at the conference could not be distributed properly, the diplomat said.

Wood said the U.S. position was firm on Hamas meeting the three conditions, and Clinton would reiterate this in informal talks with other Quartet members on Monday.

“We must not send mixed signals to Hamas,” said Wood. Clinton did not speak to reporters in person.

After the conference in Egypt, Clinton travels to Jerusalem to see Israeli politicians, who are trying to cobble together a new government after February elections.

Human rights groups have also urged Clinton to press the Israelis to ease restrictions on border crossings into Gaza and allow aid and goods to pass freely through.

Wood said the United States wanted to “see those border crossings open” but that smuggling of weapons had to stop. “It’s a difficult situation,” he said.

Clinton plans to meet Benjamin Netanyahu, the hawkish Israeli prime minister-designate who on Saturday abandoned efforts to form a broad coalition government with centrist Tzipi Livni, who has been involved in U.S.-brokered peace talks.

Livni has accused Netanyahu of insufficient commitment to the talks, and her decision not to join a government weakens Clinton’s effort to kick-start the peace effort that her husband, Bill Clinton, failed to conclude when he was president.

Silvan Shalom, a Netanyahu ally, told Reuters the Likud leader would engage in dialogue with the Palestinians but would not agree in advance to the two-state solution advocated by the international powers since the Oslo accords of 1993.

Clinton will also travel to the West Bank to see Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, before going to Brussels for meetings with NATO foreign ministers.

(Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Palestinian Authority (PA) ministry fro prisoner affairs claims Israel poisons detainees, demands WHO inquiry

Ashkar accuses Israel of giving poisonous medicine to Palestinian captives

[ 04/02/2009 - 06:48 PM ]

GAZA, (PIC)– The spokesman of the PA prisoners and ex-prisoners’ affairs ministry Riyadh Al-Ashkar on Wednesday accused the Israeli prisons authority (IPA) of deliberately injecting sick Palestinian prisoners with infected needles, and of giving them poisonous medicines. According to Ashkar, “reliable” information from Palestinian captives (a number of them are medics and aware of the kind of medicine given to them) treated in the Ramle prison hospital affirmed that the IPA was injecting Palestinian patients with needles infected with serious viruses like hepatitis. In this regard, Ashkar called on the World Health Organization (WHO) and other medical groups to immediately conduct thorough investigation of the matter. Few years ago, the head of medicine section in the Israeli health ministry revealed that her government used Palestinian captives in Israeli jails as guinea pigs to test new Israeli medicines. Ashkar cited a number of cases of those Palestinian patients, including prisoner Othman Abu Kharaj, 38, of Jenin city who was injected with a hepatitis-infected needles, among other cases. Around 11,000 Palestinian citizens are still detained in Israeli jails; at least 1,500 of them are suffering of chronic diseases, according to Palestinian records.

PFLP and Sa’ika organization call for rebuilding PLO on the basis of 2005 Cairo Agreement and 2006 Letter of National Reconciliation

Popular front and Sa’ika faction call for rebuilding PLO

[ 03/02/2009 - 09:02 AM ]

GAZA, (PIC)– The popular front for the liberation of Palestine and the Sa’ika organization on Monday called for rebuilding the PLO on the basis of the Cairo agreement in 2005 and the document of national reconciliation in 2006. In a statement received by the PIC, Abdelrahim Mallouh, the deputy secretary-general of the popular front, called on all Palestinian factions to work together and initiate directly comprehensive dialog in order to end the Palestinian differences and rebuild the PLO. For its part, the Sa’ika organization said that it always stresses the need for electing a new national council, electing a national authority to rehabilitate the PLO and its institutions, and involving all factions without exception in the PLO. Sa’ika also highlighted the need to separate the position of the Palestinian authority from the presidency of the PLO because the PA’s work is concentrated in civil affairs, adding that it does not want a national council which had voted to cancel the national charter of the PLO in Gaza in the presence of former US president Bill Clinton. Sa’ika also said that it wants a strong PLO representing the Palestinian people at home and abroad as well as Palestinian leadership believing in the armed struggle and resistance, not a PLO headed by a yielding PA chief and weak leadership Khaled Mashaal, the head of the Hamas political bureau, had said during a ceremony held last week in Doha that the PLO in its current situation does not represent all Palestinians and called for building a new national authority of all national forces and trends representing all Palestinians at home and abroad.

Palestinian Interior Ministry in Gaza arrests alleged spy ring

Interior ministry announces arrest of spy ring

[ 03/02/2009 - 07:31 PM ]

GAZA, (PIC)– The Palestinian interior ministry in Gaza reported Tuesday that the security apparatuses arrested several groups on a charge of providing Israel with information about the Palestinian resistance. Ihab Al-Ghussein, the spokesman for the interior ministry, said that the security apparatuses were able to arrest a spy ring spearheaded by Mohamed Al-Habbash, a nephew of the minister of social affairs in the PA unconstitutional Ramallah government, which collected information about the resistance a few days before the Israeli war started on Gaza. Ghussein added that the mission of this spy ring was to gather information on the whereabouts of the resistance fighters and then send it to PA officers in Ramallah who in turn hand over the information to Israel. He also pointed out that the security apparatuses are still in pursuit of other groups who fled during the war, noting that all the spies will be brought to justice as soon as possible. The arrest of the spy ring came days after information leaked from the Israeli intelligence had said that Israel lost contact with some of its Fatah-affiliated spies during the war on Gaza. The PLC committee of interior and security stated Tuesday that the Palestinian resistance which handled the file of spies during the Israeli war on Gaza had submitted and referred this file to the interior ministry in order to assume its role in punishing the transgressors. Ismail Al-Ashqar, the rapporteur of the PLC security committee, underlined that during the 23-day Israeli aggression on Gaza, the fifth column and a group of collaborators had a very big role in informing the IOF troops about the resistance, their homes, governmental facilities and many other targets.  Ashqar added that the security committee received confirmed information that Israel’s security coordination with the PA security apparatuses in the West Bank played a major role in guiding the IOF troops during the war. As for why the Palestinian government in Gaza let the resistance handle the file of spies, the rapporteur explained that during the war, the country was in a state of emergency, where there was an all-out war which destroyed all the security and governmental institutions and centers including prisons, so the Palestinian resistance was at that time entitled to take decisions regarding this file.