Four Palestinian resistance fighters were injured in an accidental explosion at a military training base in southern Gaza City on Tuesday morning, medics said. Gaza medical sources told Ma'an that one of the fighters sustained serious wounds and the other three were moderately injured. more

Dozens of women took part in a sit-in protest on Monday in front of UNRWA's headquarters in Gaza to demand that the international community accelerate the reconstruction of Gaza. The protest was organized by the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network (PNGO) and also called for an end to the eight-year Israeli blockade on the coastal territory. Women held placards calling on the international community to uphold its responsibilities and pressure Israel to allow reconstruction material into Gaza, as well as calling on Fatah and Hamas to end their disunity. Large swathes of the Gaza Strip remain in ruin following last summer's 50-day war between Israel and Hamas, which left 100,000 Gazans homeless. One activist at the demonstration, Andalib Adwan, stressed the importance of holding Israel accountable in front of international courts. more

NABLUS (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces uprooted 300 olive trees on private Palestinian land in the Nablus village of Salem on Monday, Palestinian liaison officials said. Director of the Nablus District Civil Liaison Office, Luay al-Saadi, told Ma'an that Israeli bulldozers uprooted the trees 48 hours after his office had requested that Palestinian farmers be given access to plow the land. The fields are located near the illegal Israeli outpost of Havat Skali. There were at least 329 incidents of settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank in 2014, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. more

Sources privy to talks between the Islamic Jihad delegation and Egyptian authorities in Cairo said a deal regarding Rafah crossing is beginning to formulate. The two groups started discussions in Cairo on March 1 to address the need for Egyptian authorities to open the Rafah crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, a need that has taken particular urgency due to the detrimental impact of movement restrictions on the reconstruction of the war-torn areas of the strip. Sources said that Egyptian authorities agreed in principle to opening the crossing on regular basis soon, before opening it completely on the long run when Sinai calms. Opening the crossing will be contingent on the role of the unity government in its operation, and reliant on a commitment by Hamas to stop interfering in internal Egyptian issues, sources added. more

Palestinian medical sources have reported that a fisher who was shot and injured by Israeli navy fire, earlier Saturday, died of his wounds in the Shifa Medical Center, in Gaza, a few hours after his injury. The fisher, Tawfiq Abu Ryala, 34, was shot in the abdomen when Israeli naval ships opened fire on fishing boats in Palestinian territorial waters, less than six nautical miles off the coast. The soldiers also forced two fishers, Jihad, 22, and his brother Wahid Sayyed Kaskin, 23 years of age, to swim towards their ship, and kidnapped them. The attack is part of frequent Israeli violations against the fishers, and their boats, in direct violation of all ceasefire agreements, and the Oslo accords. Hundreds of residents marched in the funeral procession and ceremony of the slain Palestinian while chanting slogans against the Israeli occupation, its escalating violations and assaults. more

Egypt will reopen its Rafah border crossing with the Gaza strip Monday and Tuesday to allow humanitarian cases to cross. The decision by Egyptian authorities marks the fourth time the border will be opened since it was closed after a suicide bombing in the Sinai Peninsula in October killed 30 soldiers, security officials said. Director of the Gaza crossings Maher Abu Sabha told Ma'an that the Egyptian authorities will open the crossing from both sides. Palestinians who travel through Rafah are mostly students heading to universities in Egypt or beyond, and those seeking medical treatment. October's attack also led to a state of emergency and curfew being imposed in some parts of North Sinai where security forces are battling an Islamist insurgency. The army has also created a wide buffer zone along the border with Gaza aimed at preventing infiltration by militants. more

Seven-year-old Anas Yahya Abdeen was reportedly shot with a rubber-coated bullet by Israeli soldiers on Friday evening in his house in the Ras al-Amud neighborhood east of the Old City of Jerusalem. According to his father, the boy was hit after Israeli troops stormed the house of Abd al-Razeq al-Salayma who allegedly drove his vehicle into a group of Israeli border police in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood earlier on Friday. Anas was standing in the balcony opposite to the house of al-Salayma family when "all of the sudden he started to cry and shout, and we realized later that he was hit by a black rubber-coated bullet in his arm," the father explained. Separately, a young Palestinian man was shot with a rubber-coated bullet in his forehead during clashes in the Ein al-Luza area of the Silwan neighborhood southeast of the Old City, according to Majdi al-Abbasi of the Silwan-based Wadi Hilweh Information Center. more

Israeli forces deployed on the border east of Khan Younis opened fire at Palestinians on Friday. Witnesses report the shots were fired on Palestinians in their agricultural lands in eastern al-Qarrara, north of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. An Israeli army spokeswoman told Ma'an that soldiers fired warning shots as Palestinians approached the fence, after which the individuals turned back. No injuries were reported. Palestinians whose agricultural lands lie close to the buffer zone between Gaza and Israel have reported open fire from Israeli forces as a routine occurrence. more

The Gaza Strip's sole power plant was shut down on Wednesday evening as Qatari-donated fuel supplies finally ran out, a Gaza power authority said. "The power plant stopped producing electricity during the night, after funds from Qatari donations to cover fuel costs ran out," the Gaza authority said. "We are unable to pay for the fuel because of the taxes on purchasing it." Hamas pays the PA for fuel imported to besieged Gaza, but is short of cash and had been unable to cover the additional costs in tax. In December, Qatar stepped in and donated $10 million to the PA to cover the tax, effectively exempting Hamas from paying it. But that money has dried up, and the PA is insisting Hamas begin paying the tax again, the group says. The plant requires 550,000 liters of fuel per day to produce at capacity, the energy authority says. more

From the Guardian - The arrest of three Israelis accused of shipping huge amounts of scrap metal to Gaza – allegedly used by Hamas in rocket-making workshops – has raised embarrassing questions over Israeli supervision of exports to Gaza. The news of the arrests of the three men – two of whom worked for a scrap metal business – was followed by the disclosure that Israeli security officials had warned two of the men almost a year ago over their activities. About 50,000 tonnes of metal, and other dual-use materials that the Shin Bet security service has said could be used in tunnel building, was shipped via the Kerem Shalom border crossing. Three Jewish Israelis and six Palestinians appeared in court earlier this week charged with assisting an enemy in wartime, terror financing and fraud. The remaining members of the group were said to be Palestinians from Gaza although it was not clear how they came to be arrested. more

Two Palestinian fishermen were shot and injured as Israeli naval gunboats opened fire at a group of fishing boats off the Mediterranean coast west of the al-Sudaniyya neighborhood in the northern Gaza Strip. Speaker of the union of Gaza fishermen, Nizar Ayyash, identified the victims as Eid Muhsin Bakr and Ziad Fahd Bakr, confirming that one of them is in a serious condition. The two have been evacuated to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Ayyash added that Israel's navy arrested three other fishermen. The Aug. 26 ceasefire agreement between Israel and Palestinian militant groups stipulated that Israel would immediately 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. more

CAIRO, (PIC)-- The Egyptian Minister of Justice Mahfouz Saber said that a government committee will start confiscating all properties and funds of Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, after being labeled “terrorist organization”. Mahfouz told Ahramonline website that “Hamas has been labeled as a terrorist organization which is dangerous to the Egyptian national security. Thus, its members in Egypt will be arrested and its funds along with headquarters will be confiscated”. “The government will not appeal the (court) verdict against Hamas which means it is enforceable”, the minister elaborated. more

Israel is to double the amount of water it channels annually to Palestinians in the blockaded Gaza Strip, a defense ministry body said Wednesday. A humanitarian crisis has gripped Gaza since a July-August war with Israel, which controls most of the territory's resources, its imports and exports as well as the movement of people. The body responsible for coordinating Israeli government activity in the Palestinian territories, COGAT, said it is to increase the volume of water it provides to Gaza from five to 10 million cubic meters (175 to 350 million cubic feet) per year, beginning within days. The decision was in response to growing needs in the Palestinian enclave, a spokeswoman told AFP. more

Israel should investigate the killing of more than 1,500 Palestinian civilians, one third of them children, during the war on the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2014, and should make the findings public, according to a report submitted Tuesday to the United Nations Human Rights Council. The report was issued by Makarim Wibisono who has recently become UN Human Rights Council special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territory. It was his first report since he replaced Richard Falk. In his report, Wibisono, a former Indonesian ambassador, said that 2,256 Palestinians were killed during the military confrontation in the Gaza Strip in July and August 2014 of whom 1,563 were civilians including 538 children. Israel, he added, says its army launched a military offensive in response to rockets fired from the Hamas-run coastal enclave at Israeli towns bordering the area. Sixty-six Israeli soldiers and five civilians were killed. "The stark disparity in casualty figures on th...

Muhammad Abu Safiyya lost everything during Israel’s 51-day attack on Gaza during the summer of 2014. Most of the thirty-six homes in his village, also called Abu Safiyya, were completely destroyed after Israeli forces invaded. “We came back during ceasefires and each time we returned we found [the area] worse,” the 54-year-old father of six told The Electronic Intifada. The signs of destruction still remain visible in the northern Gaza village. A pair of torched cars rest on their sides near the barn on Abu Safiyya’s farm and a large John Deere tractor is now an immense pile of contorted steel. During the offensive, Israeli strikes killed 2,257 Palestinians, most of whom were civilians, according to the United Nations monitoring group OCHA. “There aren’t any water wells left and [Israel] destroyed the mosque,” Abu Safiyya said. Abu Safiyya is unable to calculate how much it will cost him to repair the damage. “It’s impossible to know exactly how much we lost,” he said, explaini...

Israeli troops shot and injured a young Palestinian man during clashes in the northern West Bank town of Qabatia west of Jenin on Tuesday morning, security sources said. Palestinian security sources told Ma'an that some 40 Israeli military vehicles stormed the town at dawn firing tear-gas canisters, stun grenades and rubber-coated balls. The presence of Israeli military provoked local young men who confronted the Israeli soldiers pelting them with stones and empty bottles. The soldiers then started to use live ammunition and as a result 20-year-old Muhammad Ali Hithnawi was shot in his left foot. more

Gaza's only power plant is due to shut down by the end of this week as donor funding for fuel in the coastal territory has run out, officials said. The energy and natural resource authority told Ma'an that the power plant had been using a Qatari grant to pay for diesel fuel to maintain operations. Gaza's sole power station, which was damaged during the war, is struggling with a severe lack of fuel and is only able to supply the enclave with six hours of power per day. In July, Amnesty International said that there could be no justification for "targeting a civilian structure that provides crucial services to so many civilians." "The strike on the power plant, which cut off electricity and running water to Gaza's 1.8 million residents and numerous hospitals has catastrophic humanitarian implications and is very likely to amount to a war crime," Philip Luther, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme, said. more

Israeli naval boats on Monday opened fire at fishermen off the coast of northern Gaza, residents said. The incident occurred near the neighborhood of al-Sudaniyya, with the fishermen returning to shore for fear of arrest or having their vessels confiscated. An Israeli army spokeswoman said she was looking into the incident. On Sunday, residents said Israeli boats opened fire at fishermen in the early morning. No injuries were reported. There are around 4,000 Palestinian fishermen in the coastal enclave, 90 percent of whom are poor according to a 2011 report by the International Committee of the Red Cross. more

Israeli troops shot and injured two young Palestinian men on Sunday morning in Duheisha refugee camp south of Bethlehem in the southern West Bank. Locals told Ma'an that clashes broke out early in the morning between young Palestinian men and Israeli soldiers who raided the refugee camp at dawn to detain a young man from his house. The victims were evacuated to Bethlehem district's public hospital in Beit Jala. An Israeli army spokeswoman told Ma'an as forces entered the camp, young Palestinians threw a grenade at soldiers who responded with live fire at the lower extremities with .22 caliber rounds. One hit and slight injury was confirmed. Before they left the camp, Israeli troops detained 26-year-old Bilal al-Sayfi and took him to an unknown destination. Israeli forces shot and killed Palestinian teenager Jihad Shehada al-Jaafari in Duheisha camp last week. more

From Middle East Monitor - The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, denounced as "shocking" on Saturday an Egyptian court decision to designate the group as a "terrorist organisation". This, spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told Anadolu, is a "dangerous" decision which represents a "shift" in Egypt-Palestine relations. "Unfortunately, the situation has been turned upside down," said Abu Zuhri. "Israel the enemy has become a friend of Egypt while Hamas - which is an integral part of the Palestinian people – has become a terrorist." Nevertheless, he insisted that Hamas will not be affected by the court's decision." "It has been made," he said, "to export Egypt's domestic problems." Earlier on Saturday the Egyptian court made the "terrorist" designation of Hamas following claims that the movement had carried out terrorist attacks in Egypt through tunnels linking the Sinai Peninsula...