GAZA CITY: For the first time in years, Israel has announced that it will provide temporary visitor permits to Gaza Strip residents during the Eid Al-Adha festival.
The decision will allow 400 Palestinians to visit Al-Aqsa Mosque, while 500 others will be permitted to visit first-degree relatives in the West Bank and Israel.
Read MoreTEL AVIV: Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank early on Thursday. He was the third Palestinian to be killed in a little over 24 hours at a time of heightened Mideast tensions.
The Israeli military said forces operating in the Dheisheh refugee camp in the West Bank city of Bethlehem opened fire after being pelted with rocks and makeshift bombs. The Palestinian Health Ministry said Ayman Mheisen, 29, was killed.
Read MoreAt Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem, of all places, U.S. President Joe Biden signed a death certificate. The two-state solution died a long time ago, and now so has the Palestinians’ strategic choice of relying on the West in their struggle for their national rights.
This hope drew its last breath at Augusta Victoria. In his speech Biden mused at great length about his and his family’s time in the hospital; he remembered the intensive care ward. A flat line on the monitor meant death, he learned there. About an hour later, in Bethlehem, the monitor flatlined. The path the Palestinians embarked on 50 years ago has come to an end. They have reached a dead end.
Read MoreIsraeli warplanes raided the Gaza Strip before dawn on Saturday in what officials said was a retaliatory strike for rocket fire from the Palestinian territory controlled by Hamas.
The exchange of fire came hours after US President Joe Biden had visited Israel and the West Bank.
“Fighter jets struck a military site in the central Gaza Strip belonging to the Hamas terrorist organisation,” the Israeli army said. “The military site consists of an underground complex containing raw materials used for the manufacturing of rockets.”
Read MoreUS President Joe Biden has disputed charges that Israel is an “apartheid” nation, instead calling it a “democracy” and a “friend” while touting billions in additional military support.
Speaking to Israel’s N12 News just before embarking on a trip to the Middle East on Wednesday, Biden was asked about “voices in the Democratic Party” which consider Israel an apartheid state and urge for an end to unconditional US aid.
Read MoreThe collapse of the short-lived Israeli government of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid validates the argument that the political crisis in Israel was not entirely instigated and sustained by former Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Read MoreJEDDAH – U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday publicly committed to a two-state solution based on 1967 borders with mutually agreed land swaps — a return to the Obama administration’s positions after Donald Trump all but abandoned these principles.
Biden’s remarks, given alongside Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, are his most public commitment and detailed vision of a solution to the regional conflict. However, during the Israel leg of his trip Biden said that conditions on the ground were not ripe for such efforts.
Read MoreJoe Biden was greeted by small groups of protesters and billboards decrying the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories as apartheid during his brief visits to East Jerusalem and Bethlehem, signs of disappointment at the sidelining of the Palestinian quest for statehood during the president’s tour of the Middle East. The president visited Augusta Victoria […]
Read MoreUS President Joe Biden met Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas in the occupied West Bank on Friday for talks expected to focus on economic measures without striking any major diplomatic breakthrough. His arrival in Bethlehem comes ahead of a visit to Saudi Arabia, whose leaders on Friday changed aviation rules in an apparent gesture of openness […]
Read MoreUS President Joe Biden said Friday he had confronted Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over attacks on dissidents during his visit to Saudi Arabia, a country he once vowed to make a “pariah” over its human rights abuses. Prince Mohammed drew global outrage for the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom’s […]
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