GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- University students from the Gaza Strip on Sunday threw imitation diplomas into the Mediterranean Sea to symbolize their lost collegiate dreams, they told Ma'an. Many students who study outside Gaza have all but given up hope of catching up with their college credits after being stranded in Gaza for months due to the closure of Egypt's Rafah crossing with the Strip. In response, dozens decided to throw symbolic diplomas into the sea in protest against the jointly enforced Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza. One protestor said he had "lost confidence in the humanity of the world and its human rights councils." Another protester, named Mansoon, said she had been admitted to a university abroad but was not able to attend given the ongoing closure of the Rafah crossing. The protesters urged Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to prioritize their "responsibilities" toward Gaza. more

NEGEV, (PIC)-- A general strike took place on Sunday in the Palestinian Bedouin town Tel Assabea (Tel Sheva) in the Negev in protest at the Israeli police failure to curb rampant violence and crime in Arab towns. The general strike, which was called for by the local council and political forces in the town, was intended, in particular, to protest the recent killing of 32-year-old Tayseer Abu Ghanem. Abu Ghanem was killed by anonymous gunmen as he was along with friends on Friday night in a coffee shop in the town. Others, including a child, were also wounded in the attack. more

The Palestinian Detainees and Ex-Detainees Committee has reported, Saturday, that Israeli soldiers deliberately terrorize Palestinian children during their abduction, and while under interrogation. The Committee said the soldiers continuously shout in the faces of the kidnapped children, assault and beat them, and “drag them to their vehicles in a savage manner, treating them like criminals." It added that, during interrogation, the children are subject to intimidation, physical and psychological torture, in addition to being threatened that the soldiers would harm their families, especially their mothers and sisters. The Committee further stated that there has been a dangerous increase in the abduction of children in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem, adding that such an escalation indicates deliberate and planned policies. “The children aren't only beaten and assaulted during the abduction” it stated, “They are often taken to the nearest station; and that is when t...

GAZA CITY: A bomb blew up the car of an official with the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza, the second such attack in recent weeks, a security source said Saturday. The blast, which occurred late on Friday night but caused no casualties, comes as political tensions mount in the Palestinian territory. "Police have opened an investigation after a makeshift bomb blew up the car of Sheikh Sami Hams in Nuseirat refugee camp" south of Gaza City, a security official told AFP on condition of anonymity. The vehicle had been parked outside and was completely destroyed, according to witnesses. more

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) -- The leaders of the United Nations and the Arab League made an urgent appeal to international donors Friday to expedite aid promised to the people of Gaza, following last year's devastating war. In a joint statement, Ban Ki-moon and Nabil al-Arabi expressed their "deep concern" over limited resources to improve the situation in Gaza. They "urgently appeal to donors to honor and disburse as soon as possible their financial commitments made at the October 2014 Cairo Conference," the statement said. Those funds include money for UN agencies in Gaza to "prevent a further deterioration in the already dire humanitarian situation." The international community promised $5.4 billion to the Palestinians, half of which is to help rebuild Gaza after devastating Israeli bombing in July and August last year. The Israeli assault killed around 2,200 people and left nearly 110,000 homeless, with more than 11,000 more left injured. more

Salah Sweidan fled his home while Israel was bombing Gaza in July last year. “I honestly don’t remember the exact day,” Sweidan, 22, told The Electronic Intifada. “It is a blur. We tried to stay in our homes, but it was very dangerous.” Sweidan lived in a four-story home in the al-Shaf district of Gaza City along with his pregnant wife, four brothers and their families. When Israeli shells began to pound their neighbors’ homes, the family gathered what they could and sought shelter in the central Gaza Strip until the attack ended. “We came back to check on the home during every ceasefire,” he recalled. “We found it intact every time. But then the last time we came it looked like this.” Although the home is still standing, the walls were blown off by shells and it looks like it could collapse at any moment. No one from Sweidan’s immediate family was killed, but thousands of others were not as lucky. The Sweidan family home was completely destroyed by Israeli shelling. (Patrick O....

Around $12 million of aid donations will be distributed to Palestinians displaced by Israel's military offensive on the Gaza Strip last summer, a Palestinian official said Thursday. Minister of Public works Mufeid al-Hasanyneh said that the United Nations Development Programme will distribute $6 million in $300 payments to those affected by the conflict. Another $6 million will be distributed to Palestinians whose homes were destroyed. Rent payments will be covered for a further four months for those who had already been receiving support, while rent for those yet to have received money will be covered for eight months. The minister said he expects the money to be available early next week. more

Palestinian MP Jamal Al-Khodary, of the Popular Committee Against the Siege, has said that the Israeli blockade against the Gaza Strip, which restricts the entry of construction materials, constitutes the most serious obstacle to the reconstruction of the Strip and is serving to exacerbate an already deteriorating humanitarian situation. Al-Khodary stressed that the key to the reconstruction of Gaza lies in lifting the blockade and the implementation of donor pledges made during the Reconstruction of Gaza Conference in Cairo, which took place in October last year following the devastating Israeli offensive against the Strip over the summer. In a press statement issued on Tuesday, Al-Khodary explained that the building materials allowed to enter the Strip by the Israeli occupation since October of last year do not meet Gaza's needs. He pointed to the availability of funding – amounting to about $400 million – for projects belonging to Arab and international institutions, as we...

For a second time in two days, Israeli forces on Thursday morning tore down a protest tent camp which Palestinian popular resistance activists rebuilt in the E1 area. Bawwabat al-Quds (the Gate to Jerusalem) was first set up on Tuesday evening and Israeli forces destroyed it on Wednesday morning. Defiant resistance activists then rebuilt the main tent in the camp on Wednesday evening. Local sources told Ma'an Thursday that Israeli troops stormed the camp at 2 a.m. Thursday after all activists left and tore down the tent. The sources said that the Israelis confiscated the tent and all properties they found in the camp. The "Gate to Jerusalem" was set up in the Khilet al-Rahib area east of Abu Dis near the main Ramallah-Bethlehem road in protest against Israeli settler encroachment on Palestinian lands east of Jerusalem. The protesters were outraged at an Israeli plan revealed last year which called for the forced expulsion of tens of thousands of Palestinian Bedoui...

A 14-year-old Palestinian schoolgirl jailed by Israel has become a symbol of Palestinian anger over the arrests of children in the occupied territories. The two-month sentence for Malak al-Khatib, who was accused of stone-throwing and possession of a knife, has unleashed a wave of solidarity and support among Palestinians. "My heart broke when I saw her in court, cuffed and shackled," her mother Khawla al-Khatib told AFP from her home in the town of Beitin near Ramallah. "I brought in a coat for her to wear because it was cold, but the judge refused to let her have it," the distressed 50-year-old said. Israeli forces arrest about 1,000 children every year in the occupied West Bank, often on charges of stone-throwing, according to rights group Defense for Children International Palestine. But the case of Malak has brought countless media organizations flocking to her family's door and attracted more public attention than most. The Palestinian Prisoners...

Israeli forces raided a Palestinian high school in the northern West Bank on Wednesday morning, storming the facility and forcing students to leave at gunpoint while detaining school administrators. Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian official who monitors Israeli settlement-related activities, told Ma'an that the incident occurred near the villages of al-Lubban and al-Sawiya south of Nablus, both of which are served by the school. Daghlas said that several Israeli military vehicles stormed the high school and forced the students to flee as they detained the school principal and his assistant. Daghlas said that the soldiers interrogated the two school administrators and claimed that students from the school had hurled stones at vehicles driven by Israeli settlers on the main road between Nablus and Ramallah. more

(Reuters) - A U.N. inquiry into possible war crimes in the Gaza conflict will produce its report on time next month, officials said on Tuesday, brushing aside a demand from Israel's prime minister to shelve it after the chairman resigned. It marked the latest chapter in fraught relations between Israel and the main U.N. rights forum, which the Jewish state and its ally Washington accuse of bias against Israel. Activists voiced concern that Israel was trying to derail the inquiry. Mary McGowan Davis, already a member of the independent commission of inquiry on Gaza and a former justice of the Supreme Court of New York, will replace Canadian academic William Schabas, a United Nations statement said. "Her work will necessarily involve reviewing the commission of inquiry's work to date and ensuring that it impartially fulfils its important mandate," Philippe Dam of Human Rights Watch told Reuters. "We hope all parties will cooperate fully." Schabas said on ...

Palestinian resistance faction Hamas has blamed Israel for the resignation of the head of a commission formed by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to investigate last summer's Israeli military onslaught against the blockaded Gaza Strip. The resignation of William Schabas from his post is "the inevitable result of Israeli... pressure on the commission," Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said in a statement. "Israeli pressure aims at preventing any legal action that would reveal the truth about Israeli crimes [during the Gaza onslaught]," he added. Nevertheless, Barhoum urged the UN to go ahead with the probe and not to bow to "any pressure or blackmail against its investigative committees." On Monday, Schabas, a Canadian professor of international law, reportedly resigned from his post as head of the investigation committee due to Israeli allegations of bias. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday welcomed Schabas' resignation and ...

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

Activists have accused the UK government and Israeli arms company Elbit Systems of running scared from a court case that would have put their collusion with Israeli war crimes on trial. This follows the announcement that all charges have been dropped against nine campaigners who occupied the roof of an Elbit Systems factory in Staffordshire during Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza. This means that the UK government will no longer be required to reveal details of the arms trade with Israel, and Elbit will avoid having to testify about the use of its drones during Israel’s massacre in Gaza last summer. The protest shut down UAV Engines, owned by Israel’s Elbit Systems, for two days from 5-6 August 2014 during Israel’s 50 day assault on the Gaza strip. The Israeli-owned factory exports engines to Israel for use in Elbit’s Hermes 450 drones that are widely documented as having been used to deliberately attack Palestinian civilians in Gaza, including during Israel’s massacre of more than 2,...

GAZA CITY (Ma'an) – Israeli troops on Tuesday morning opened fire at Palestinian farmers near the border fence in the central Gaza Strip, witnesses said. They explained that farmers were trying to reach their fields east of al-Maghazi refugee camp when Israeli soldiers fired at them from military watchtowers on the other side of the border. more

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has given instructions to continue withholding tax revenues that Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, Israeli media reported Monday. Daily newspaper Israel Hayom reported that Netanyahu gave orders to withhold $100 million the PA was supposed to receive as tax revenues for January. Israel was already withholding another $100 million of PA tax revenue for December. The Israeli government decided to take that step in response to Palestine's decision to sign the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The Palestinian move was a step toward suing Israeli troops and officials for alleged war crimes at the ICC. more

Abdallah al-Hourani has been forced to make the kind of decisions that parents dread. Receiving no wages for the past seven months, he has stopped paying tuition fees for two of his children who are attending university. Of his many debts, he owes nearly $2,000 for basic groceries, a considerable sum given that his monthly salary stood at only $1,000. Al-Hourani is a nurse in the orthopedics department of Nasser Hospital in the Khan Younis area of Gaza. His problems are shared by around 42,000 of Gaza’s public sector employees. All of them are being denied wages because of circumstances beyond their control. In April last year, the Palestinians’ two main political parties, Fatah and Hamas, signed a “national unity” agreement. Although it was supposed to end the divisions between the Palestinians’ representatives, many aspects of it were vague — including the question of salaries for those employed in the public sector. Workers have been left in the lurch as a consequence. That al...

Israeli naval forces opened fire at fishermen off the coast of Gaza on Monday, damaging a fishing boat. Fishermen told Ma'an that Israeli boats stationed off the coast northwest of Gaza City opened fire at them while they were inside the designated zone. One boat was damaged by the gunfire but no injuries were reported. On Saturday, fishermen reported a similar incident near Gaza City. The Aug. 26 ceasefire agreement reached after the end of Israel's assault on Gaza stipulated that Israel would expand the fishing zone off Gaza's coast, allowing fishermen to sail as far as six nautical miles from shore, and would continue to expand the area gradually. Since then, there have been widespread reports that Israeli forces have opened fire at fishermen within those new limits. more

GAZA, (PIC)-- The Ministry of Health in Gaza asked the Palestinian unity government to solve the health crisis in the Strip, urging it to revise its policies towards the Strip and its health services. The spokesman of the Ministry, Dr. Ashraf al-Qudrah, said in a statement on Sunday the government has been ignoring the cleaning companies’ financial dues, prompting them to threaten a return to escalatory measures. He added the government is also ignoring the need for filling job vacancies in the health facilities. Qudrah called for solving the crisis of civil servants in the health sector on the administrative and financial levels. “They have not received their salaries for eight successive months, which has dangerous implications on their living conditions and on the overall health services”. more