BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Saudi Arabia has announced that it will provide $35 million to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in a bid to avert a financial crisis within the organization, a statement said. Yousef al-Bassam, Managing Director of the Saudi Fund for Development, said the donation aims to mitigate a funding crisis within UNRWA, which has threatened to delay the start of the school year for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees. "The closure of schools for half a million Palestinian children would be a catastrophe. I hope the rest of UNRWA’s steadfast partners will take heart in the continued confidence placed in the agency by the Kingdom with this latest contribution, and step forward with their own pledges to keep UNRWA’s operations going,” al-Bassam said. The money will be spent on education and health in the Gaza Strip, upgrading schools and health centers in Jordan, and constructing three health centers in the occupied West Bank. Around $19 million wil...

GAZA, (PIC)-- Adnan Abu Hasna, the Gaza-based media adviser of UNRWA, confirmed that Saudi Arabia donated 13.5 million U.S. dollars to UNRWA to be used for repairing the houses, which were damaged during the last Israeli aggression on Gaza. Adnan Abu Hasna said, in a statement on Tuesday, that the mentioned sum was allocated by Saudi Arabia’s development fund for Gaza reconstruction. He pointed out that the Saudi donations are to be distributed on Tuesday and Wednesday to 10,000 families to repair their partially damaged houses all over Gaza, noting that the donations have already been transferred to bank accounts in the Strip. The UNRWA media adviser valued the role of Saudi Arabia in supporting the Palestinian refugees as well as the UNRWA in all of its work locations, noting that the Saudi role has been significant and pioneering in terms of supporting the refugees. more

GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has donated $12 million to the UN's Palestine refugee agency UNRWA to support the repair of Gaza schools damaged in Israel's latest offensive. UNRWA said in a statement that nearly $9.8 million will be dedicated to reconstruction, while just over $2.2 million be allocated for furniture and equipment. Eight UNRWA-run schools in the Gaza Strip will benefit from the Saudi donation, according to the statement. "We deeply appreciate this generous and continuous support by the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Saudi Fund for Development to the UNRWA and the Palestinian refugees," Tawfiq Abid, the chair of UNRWA's program for infrastructure and refugee camp development, said in the statement. more

GAZA: Saudi Arabia has pledged $500 million to help rebuild Gaza, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami al-Hamdallah said Thursday, with the full cost of postwar reconstruction expected to be around $4 billion over three years. Saudi Arabia’s commitment comes ahead of a conference in Cairo on Oct. 12 when Palestinian leaders hope other donors, including Turkey, Qatar, the European Union and United States, will step forward with promises of support. “ Saudi Arabia has initiated donations by pledging $500 million,” Hamdallah told reporters in Gaza, speaking via video conference from the West Bank. He said he hoped further pledges would cover the full cost of reconstruction in time. An estimated 18,000 homes were destroyed during the seven-week war, while a further 40,000 were extensively damaged. more

GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- The Legislative Council in the Gaza Strip on Monday welcomed a delegation of activists from Saudi Arabia. The group arrived in Gaza as part of a "Miles of Smiles" convoy. Jamal Dahdah, head of the delegation, told Ma'an that the group aimed to show solidarity with the Palestinian people. "We joined Miles of Smiles, and another group from Saudi Arabia arrived a few months ago. The goal (of such visits) is to maintain interconnection between Saudi Arabia and Palestine, especially Gaza which embraces resistance and insists on the right to defend the Palestinian cause," Dahdah added. more

By Emil Protanlinski for ZDNet Summary: An Israeli hacker who goes by the name Hannibal this week stole 85,000 Facebook logins from Arab users of the social network, as part of an online hacker war being fought in the Middle East. In case you’ve been sleeping under a rock (or were understandably distracted by what Anonymous is up to), you may not know that Israel and Saudi Arabia are currently in the middle of a hacker war. In addition to millions of e-mail accounts, bank accounts, and credit cards, information from Facebook, or more specifically, from the users of the world’s biggest social network, has been stolen. Earlier this week, an Israeli hacker, who calls himself Hannibal online, managed to obtain the Facebook credentials (e-mail addresses and passwords) of 85,000 “helpless Arabs.” He then proceeded to post them on Pastebin , a simple website that allows anyone to upload text (usually code) for public viewing. He first posted 20,000 logins on Sunday, then 30,000 logins on Mond...

RIYADH, (PIC)-- Saudi prince Khaled Al-Saud declared a financial reward of $900,000 for anyone capturing one Israeli soldier in order to swap him with Palestinian prisoners. The prince told Daleel satellite channel over the phone that his reward was a response to Israeli death threats received by Saudi preacher Awad Al-Qarni who previously announced a $100, 000 reward for the capture of one Israeli soldier. "Qarni offered 100 thousands dollars for anyone who can capture a soldier and they responded by earmarking one million bounty on his head, but I say to Qarni I am with you and I will pay 900 thousands dollars so that the total can be one million dollars for the capture of one Israeli soldier in order to have Palestinian prisoners freed," the prince stated to the channel. Prince Khaled is the third son of prince Talal bin-Abdul Aziz Al-Saud and the brother of prince Al-Waleed bin-Talal. more

The BDS National Committee (BNC) has declared a long sought-after victory as Alstom lost the bid for the second phase of the Saudi Haramain Railway project, worth $10 billion US dollars, after pressure from the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, including effective campaigning from the newly launched KARAMA, a European campaign to Keep Alstom Rail And Metro Away. In 2008 the BNC, the largest Palestinian civil society coalition, with partners in Europe and Israel, launched the Derail Veolia and Alstom campaign, due to the two companies’ involvement in Israel’s illegal Jerusalem Light Rail (JLR) project, which explicitly aims to “Judaize Jerusalem,” according to official Israeli statements, by cementing Israel’s hold on the illegal colonial settlements built on occupied Palestinian land in and around Jerusalem. Since then, Veolia has lost more than $12B worth of contracts following boycott activism in Sweden, the UK, Ireland and elsewhere. Alstom, too, suffered subs...

The Saudi Campaign of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques for the Relief of the Palestinian People of Gaza is sending 175 tons of rice to Gaza this week, according to a statement issued Tuesday by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). The shipment is the third installment of a major donation of food dispatched under the direction of Saudi Prince Nayef, the supervisor of the Saudi committee for the support of the Palestinian people, said the statement. It added that the shipment is being arranged jointly by the Jordanian Royal Hashemite Organization (JHCO) and UNRWA. A send-off ceremony was held at the warehouses of the JHCO to mark the departure of the food convoy, attended by Executive Director of the Saudi Committee, Mubarak Al Bakr; Representative of the Saudi Embassy in Amman, Abdel-Rahman bin Saleh Al-Subyani; Secretary General of the JHCO, Ahmad Mohammad Al-Imyan, and the Representative of the Commissioner-General of UNRWA, Peter Ford. more

Tel Aviv has denied reports that suggest Israeli bombers have been allowed to use Saudi airspace for an attack on Iran's nuclear sites. The denial came after unnamed Israeli diplomatic sources told The Sunday Times that Saudi officials have secretly agreed to allow Israeli fighter jets to fly over the kingdom to strike Iran's nuclear sites. “The Saudis have tacitly agreed to the Israeli air force flying through their airspace on a mission which is supposed to be in the common interests of both Israel and Saudi Arabia,” the The Sunday Times quoted an Israeli diplomatic source as saying. The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to deny the report on Monday, claiming it to be "completely false and baseless." more at Press TV On Sunday US Vice President Biden also appeared to give Israel the green light for attacks on Iran.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia told Obama the Arab peace offer would be cthrown in the bin unless US pressured Israel. Egypt and Saudi Arabia have been pressuring U.S. President Barack Obama to set a two-year deadline for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, and threatening to rescind the Arab peace initiative, Egyptian sources said Tuesday. On Tuesday, the London-based Arabic-language daily A-Sharq al-Awsat reported that Obama had presented to Egypt and Israel a plan for a two-state solution to be finalized within two years. According to Egyptian sources, however, it was actually Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and the country's intelligence chief Omar Suleiman who imposed the two-year deadline on Obama. They said that the Egyptians told Obama that the Arab peace initiative, which calls for normalized relations with the Arab world in return for territorial concessions, would crumble unless some real progress was made before the two-year deadline. more Nethanyahu thinks O...

Action Alert: Prevent Alstom From Building The Haramain Express Railway! End Saudi collusion with Israel Reply***Please distribute widely*** Saudi Arabia awarded French company Alstom a multi-million dollar contract for the construction of Haramain Express Railway, to link the holy cities of Makkah and Madina. Alstom is in violation of international law for its part in the construction of the Jerusalem Light Rail, which will link illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory (including East Jerusalem) with the city of Jerusalem. The construction of the light rail is part of a wider Israeli policy to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from Jerusalem and turn permanent the illegal occupation of the city. The decision by the Saudi Arabian authorities is in violation of its own international commitments. The Arab League barred member states from dealing with companies involved in the construction of Jerusalem Light Rail project. The Saudi contract sends a signal of app...

Obama says the Arabs must give Israel a gesture. That must surely be a joke on Obama's part? Unfortunately the only gestures Israel understands come through the barrel of a gun. From the NY Times ...On his Middle East tour, Mr. Obama is expected to press the Arab nations to offer a gesture to the Israelis to entice them to accelerate the peace process. But in his meetings with the Saudi king, he should be prepared for a polite but firm refusal, Saudi officials and political experts say. The Arab countries, they say, believe they have already made their best offer and that it is now up to Israel to make a gesture, perhaps by dismantling settlements in the West Bank or committing to a two-state solution. “What do you expect the Arabs to give without getting anything in advance, if Israel is still hesitating to accept the idea of two states in itself?” said Mohammad Abdullah al-Zulfa, a historian and member of the Saudi Shura Council, which serves as an advisory panel in place of a p...