RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces re-arrested former hunger striker Thaer Halahla in Ramallah early Wednesday, locals said. Israeli soldiers raided Halahla's home and a neighboring residence in Ramallah, damaging the contents of his home and confiscating his mobile phone, witnesses told Ma'an. His wife Shirin Halahla passed out during the arrest and was taken to hospital for treatment. Halahla, from the Hebron-district town of Kharas, held a 77-day hunger strike last year to protest his detention without charge by Israel. He was released in June 2012 after reaching a deal with Israeli prison authorities and greeted by crowds of supporters. more

GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Israeli bulldozers entered an area in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, Ma'an's reporter said. Nine bulldozers conducted a limited incursion east of Khan Younis, entering around 200 meters into the area and digging up local land. Palestinian farmers fled the area for fear of being shot. more

GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- UNRWA will resume distributing food aid to refugees in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said. The UN agency stopped food deliveries after dozens of protesters forced their way into its Gaza field office last Thursday, demanding reinstatement of a monthly cash allowance to poor families which was halted from April 1 due to budget cuts. UNRWA decided to reopen its food distribution centers after several local bodies reassured UN officials that employees would be safe, the agency said in a statement Monday. "UNRWA respects the right to protest peacefully, but employees must be secure and safe," the statement said. Earlier Monday, hundreds of protesters rallied outside UNRWA's office in Gaza City on Monday, protesting the suspension of aid. Protesters held banners that read "We want bread, we don't want games," and chanted "O Muslims and Arabs, see the downtrodden," according to witnesse...

GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Israel sealed its border with the Gaza Strip on Monday after militants fired a rocket into the Negev desert on Sunday evening. Israel closed the Kerem Shalom goods crossing because of rocket fire, Palestinian border official Raed Fattouh told Ma'an. into the Negev desert on Sunday evening. A Ma'an reporter said the Erez passenger terminal was also closed Monday. into the Negev desert on Sunday evening. A rocket fired from Gaza crashed into southern Israel on Sunday, without causing casualties or damage, police said. into the Negev desert on Sunday evening. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP the rocket landed in an uninhabited sector of the Negev desert. into the Negev desert on Sunday evening. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon warned on Wednesday that his country would respond to any attacks on its territory and not allow its people to come under fire. into the Negev desert on Sunday evening. Rights groups have criticized Israeli restr...

GAZA CITY (AFP) -- Hamas police on Saturday dispersed a protest in the Gaza town of Rafah by Salafist women to demand the release of members of the hardline Islamist movement, an AFP correspondent said. Witnesses said the women, who numbered around 30, were veiled and accompanied by children, carried a banner which read: "Where are human rights organisations when our children are arrested?" Police dispersed the demonstration without incident. more

At its annual congress today, an Irish lecturers’ union voted to for a comprehensive academic boycott of Israel, described by activists as the first such move of its kind in Europe. In a unanimous vote, the Teachers’ Union of Ireland called on members to “cease all cultural and academic collaboration with Israel, including the exchange of scientists, students and academic personalities, as well as all cooperation in research programmes.” The motion also called for the Irish Congress of Trade Unions to “step up its campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against the apartheid state of Israel.” David Landy, sociology lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, welcomed the motion in an Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign press release, explaining: “Undoubtedly apologists for Israeli apartheid will complain that such motions stifle academic freedom, but this is nonsense. The Palestinian call for an academic boycott of Israel is an institutional boycott, not a boycott of indiv...

GAZA CITY (AFP) -- Hamas accused Western and Arab spy agencies on Saturday of operating in the Gaza Strip and said it had a list of alleged collaborators. "The Gaza Strip is swarming with Western intelligence agencies, such as the American, British, French and German services," said Mohammed Lafi, an internal security chief, quoted on the interior ministry website. "They all target Gaza and Hamas," he said, while also pointing a finger at unnamed Arab intelligence services. The Hamas official said the security services had "a list of collaborators who will be arrested once the time for them to repent has run out." more

AL-KHALIL, (PIC)-- Israeli occupation forces (IOF) nabbed three Palestinians in Al-Khalil city including a ten-year-old child and a young man in Bethlehem at dawn Saturday. Palestinian security sources told Quds Press said that the soldiers detained Abdulhadi Abu Snene, 10, from Jabal Al-Rahme area in Al-Khalil. They said that two young men were arrested near the Ibrahimi mosque in the Old City of Al-Khalil. IOF soldiers also arrested a young man in Aida refugee camp to the north of Bethlehem after breaking into his father’s home. more

GAZA CITY (AFP) -- Hamas on Friday urged the United Nations to reconsider its suspension of food aid for Palestinian refugees, imposed after protesters stormed a UN depot. The UN Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, stopped food deliveries after dozens of Gazans forced their way into the field office on Thursday, demanding reinstatement of a monthly cash allowance to poor families which was halted from April 1 due to budget cuts. "This is an unjustified step from UNRWA," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said. "There is a right of peaceful protest for Palestinian refugees," he said, adding: "We call on UNRWA to reevaluate its position and not to overreact to residents' protest." The protesters were removed by UN security when they tried to break into a building, staff said. "We fully understand the impact of the decision to suspend cash assistance had on some of our beneficiaries," UNRWA said in a statement. "Demonstrations during th...

GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- The UN agency for Palestine refugees said Thursday it was closing offices in the Gaza Strip in response to a "dramatic and disturbing" escalation in demonstrations over the week. Protesters have been demonstrating outside UNRWA's offices to protest a reduction in financial assistance to vulnerable Palestinian refugees, but on Thursday they managed to enter a central compound. In response, the agency said, all relief and distribution centers will remain closed "until guarantees are given by all relevant groups that UNRWA operations can continue unhindered." The agency's large-scale food distribution program will continue operating, it said. more

HEBRON (Ma’an) – For the third consecutive day, young Palestinians in Hebron in the southern West Bank continued to clash with Israeli troops Thursday protesting the death of cancer prisoner Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh in Israeli custody. A Ma’an reporter said a CNN cameraman was shot and injured by a live bullet. Additionally, 21 Palestinians were hit by rubber-coated bullets, while dozens of others suffered from tear gas which the soldiers fired extravagantly. The fiercest clashes took place in Bab al-Zawiya neighborhood in the center of Hebron after the funeral procession of Abu Hamdiyeh. Young protesters hurled stones, empty bottles and fire bombs at Israeli troops who showered them with rubber-coated bullets and tear gas canisters. Palestinian Red Crescent Association official Nasser Qabaja told Ma’an that ambulances evacuated 21 young men to a public hospital in the city after they were hit with rubber-coated bullets. He also confirmed that a foreign cameraman was hit by a live...

Rawan Yaghi is a bookish 19 year old who, appropriately for a student of literature, arrives to meet me in Gaza with a text tucked under her arm. It is a well-thumbed copy of Catch 22, Joseph Heller's classic satirical novel on the absurdities of war; not an inappropriate choice for somebody who's spent her entire life amid one of the Middle East's most intractable conflicts. But Rawan's life is about to take a different direction. Currently a student at Gaza's Islamic University, she has just won a scholarship to Oxford University to study linguistics and Italian. She is looking forward to moving from the minarets of Gaza to the city of "dreaming spires". "I'm very excited. I can't wait," she smiles. "It's going to be different but it's going to be fun." more

Israeli troops have shot dead two Palestinian youths in the occupied West Bank, medical officials said on Thursday, as confrontations entered a third day following the death of a prisoner in an Israeli jail. The Israeli army said troops fired on Palestinians who threw firebombs at a guard post after dark on Wednesday near Tulkarm, in the northern West Bank. One body was swiftly recovered and a second was found in the early hours of Thursday. Palestinian officials named the dead men as Amer Nassar, 17, and Naji Belbisi, 18. The army said it was investigating the incident, which left at least one other Palestinian wounded. Tensions have risen rapidly in the West Bank and Gaza Strip following the death on Tuesday of Maysara Abu Hamdeya, 64, who was serving a life sentence in an Israeli jail. Palestinians accuse Israel of withholding care from the man and failing to release him after diagnosing that his cancer was terminal. Israel says it followed normal procedures. more

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Israeli prison doctors refused to treat Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh, who died in Israeli custody on Tuesday, and gave the cancer sufferer painkillers and antibiotics, his lawyer said. Rami Alami visited Abu Hamdiyeh in Eshel prison on March 12, and a record of his visit reveals the prisoner's long struggle with Israeli authorities for medical treatment. During the visit, weeks before his death, Abu Hamdiyeh said he had only been given painkillers to treat his cancer. He could not sleep, stand or walk, and prison doctors had refused his request for medicine to improve his appetite. The lawyer said Abu Hamdiyeh appeared tired and weak and could hardly speak. Another detainee had to relay what Abu Hamdiyeh was saying as he was barely audible. Abu Hamdiyeh told the lawyer that he went to prison doctors in Ramon jail in August with severe throat ache and swollen lymphatic and salivary glands. The doctor prescribed him antibiotic medication without doing any medic...

Hamas militants hold a symbolic coffin of the prisoner who died of cancer while in Israeli detention, on April 2. (AFP/Mohammad Abed) GAZA CITY (Ma'an) --Israeli warplanes bombed the Gaza Strip early Wednesday, causing damage but no injuries, in the first airstrike on the enclave since a November ceasefire. Two airstrikes hit a tile factory in the Shujaiyeh neighborhood, east of Gaza City, and farm land in Beit Lahiya in the north, locals said. The raids were the first since Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire on Nov. 21 to end an 8-day war on the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military said the two attacks were in response to rocket fire from the enclave. more

GAZA CITY (AFP) -- Gaza militants fired on southern Israel on Tuesday, hours after the death in custody of a Palestinian who suffered from cancer, witnesses said. Witnesses told AFP that militants in Gaza City had fired three mortar rounds on Israel. The Israeli army initially said only one projectile had landed in Israel, without causing any casualties, but later issued a statement saying nothing had landed. "It turns out that nothing fell on Israeli territories," a spokeswoman told AFP. There was no claim of responsibility from the Palestinian side. more

A Palestinian prisoner has died of cancer after claims of medical negligence by the Israeli authorities, triggering unrest in the West Bank and among Palestinian inmates in Israeli jails. A three-day hunger strike by Palestinian security prisoners has been announced. Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh, 64, died on Tuesday morning, three days after being transferred to Soroka hospital in the city of Be'er Sheva. Following news of his death, Israeli prison guards used teargas in response to protests by hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, who banged on cell doors and threw objects. Three prisoners and six guards needed medical treatment, according to the Israeli Prison Service (IPS). There were clashes in the tense West Bank city of Hebron, where Abu Hamdiyeh lived. Demonstrators threw rocks and firebombs, according to reports. Abu Hamdiyeh, who was sentenced to life in 2002 for attempted murder, was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus several months after complaining of ill health. By th...

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh, a Palestinian jailed in Israel, died in an Israeli hospital on Tuesday, after protests to secure his release failed. Hamdiyeh was transferred from prison to Soroka hospital in late March suffering from throat cancer which had spread to his spinal cord. Prisoners in Eshel and Nafha prisons had launched hunger strikes to demand Abu Hamdiyeh's release. Issa Qaraqe, the Palestinian Authority prisoners minister, said Abu Hamdiyeh's cancer spread because he did not receive treatment earlier. "It is a brutal crime against Maysara especially that the prison administration knew that he was suffering from cancer and they didn't release him and medically neglected him," Qaraqe told Ma'an. Qaraqe said Israeli prison authorities had medically neglected Abu Hamdiyeh over several years. The minister held the Israeli government responsible for Abu Hamdiyeh's death and called for an international committee to investi...

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) -- Protesters on Monday closed an UNRWA office at al-Bureij refugee camp in a protest against cuts of services. The protesters forced staff of the UN refugee agency's services office to leave, but there were no injuries or damage. Protesters called on UNRWA to stop cutting services, and to solve the issue of Palestinian refugees. They said UNRWA was responsible for Palestinian refugees according to international resolutions. The protest action was an escalation of demonstrations by the leaderships of refugee camps in the central Gaza Strip against UNRWA's "policy" of cutting services. UNRWA's central district representative Khalil al-Halabi and the director of UNRWA operations of the central districts, Sami al-Salhi, attended the protest. Al-Halabi promised to pass on the protesters' message to UNRWA. more

GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Hamas will most likely select Khalid Mashaal as the head of its politburo for a fourth time late Monday, a senior member of the Islamic movement said. "Tonight, the presidency of the political bureau will be resolved, and most likely Khalid Mashaal will remain" the Hamas leader for another term, Ahmad Yousef told Ma'an. He said the Shura Council, Hamas' political leadership, would present the names of nominees and then the council will vote. Elections are usually held in total secrecy. Mashaal had indicated previously he would not seek another term, but officials told Ma'an that Arab and Palestinian figures asked him to seek the top spot once again. In an interview Wednesday, Mashaal downplayed the idea he would represent Hamas to run for the Palestinian presidency, but he said heading the PLO was a possibility. more