Palestinian and Israeli negotiating teams this week kicked off their first round of official peace talks in Jerusalem, while Israeli army attacks on the Gaza strip leave 9 killed this week: these stories and more coming up stay tuned.

Nonviolent Resistance in West Bank

Let's begin our weekly report with the nonviolent actions in Bethlehem and Ramallah. IMEMC's George Rishmawi with the story:

The villagers of Bil'in near Ramallah city along with their international and Israeli supporters conducted their weekly protest on Friday midday.

Shortly after the midday Friday prayers, the protesters marched towards the location of the illegal wall built on the village land. The Israeli army installed a barbed-wire roadblock to prevent the protesters reaching the construction site. As soon as the demonstration reached the roadblock, troops showered the protesters with tear gas and metal rubber coated rounds, injuring three people.

Among the internationals who participated in Bil'in anti wall protest were representative of the Norwegian Socialist Youth league, a youth movement from the Socialist party in Norway.

Most of the Norwegians were from the city of Turnham, which was the first city in the world that boycotted the South African Apartheid regime in the 80s. Last year this city started a boycott campaign against Israel. Kirsti Pertsto, the league president talked to IMEMC about the reasons for participating:



Bethlehem

The popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Committee against the Wall, on Friday organized a protest in the village of al Maa'sarah, located south of Bethlehem city in the West Bank, to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the PFLP and against the construction of the Wall on the village lands.

The protestors took to the streets of the village, carrying with them Palestinian flags and banners that denounced the construction of the Wall and settlement expansion. When they reached the construction site the Israeli soldiers, who were deployed there, attacked them with batons and rifle butts. The protest finished shortly after, no injuries were reported.


For IMEMC.org this is George Rishmawi.



Political report

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas called on Washington Thursday to take on a much more articulate role in the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. IMEMC's Raphael Anderson has the details:

Abbas, who is expected to speak at the upcoming Paris donors’ conference, will also call for an immediate halt to Israeli unilateral actions, including settlement building in occupied east Jerusalem and Israeli military action against the Gaza Strip.

Abbas's concerns stem from a recent Israeli decision to construct 300 housing units in the Abu Ghonaim settlement, known to Israelis as Har Homa, in occupied east Jerusalem. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon criticized the new building project as 'unhelpful to peace-making', and other countries such as Japan, a key donor country, also gave the same reaction. U.S Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, had earlier slammed the settlement building as ' an impediment to peace'.

Meanwhile, Palestinian and Israeli negotiating teams kicked off their first round of official peace talks in west Jerusalem this week, following the Washington-sponsored peace summit held in late November in Annapolis, Maryland, in the United States. With the agreement reached in Annapolis, both sides will begin implementation of the U.S-brokered Road Map to peace blueprint of 2003, which demands Palestinians dismantle resistance groups, in return for a halt by Israel on settlement activities.

On December 17, donor countries will meet in Paris to discuss the prospects for economic development across the occupied Palestinian territories, to help advance peace between Israelis and Palestinians. A part of such developmental projects, is the setting up of two industrial zones in the West Bank, for which the UK has pledged to provide the Palestinian Authority with some hundred million dollars.

The French consul general in Jerusalem told Maan News Agency this week that the Hamas-run Gaza Strip should be included in the Paris discussions. Hamas has been suffering a crippling economic boycott by the international community, which will only be lifted when the Islamist group, which won the January 2006 parliamentary elections, recognizes Israel, renounces violence and accepts past signed agreements.

At the internal level, media reports said representatives of both Hamas and Fatah parties are set to hold meetings in Saudi Arabia, in a bid to reinitiate a deadlocked dialogue since the Islamist group took over the coastal region in mid June. Sources at both factions this week denied any possible agreement giving previously-declared positions; Fatah has been calling on Hamas to retract control over Gaza as Hamas has been demanding a well-coordinated reform of the security services.

Fatah's Gaza chief, Zakariya aL-Agha, speaking to Maan News Agency, voiced his faction's willingness to restart dialogue, but only if Hamas renounces hegemony over the region. Khalil aLhaiya, a leading Hamas figure, who is currently in Saudi Arabia, told the London-based Arabic newspaper, aL-Quds aL-Arabi earlier this week that no official dialogue has yet been initiated.

Exiled Hamas chief, Khaled Mash'al, is currently holding a series of meetings in a number of Arab capitals including Riyadh and Cairo. Meanwhile, acting-head of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Ahmad Bahhar of Hamas, briefing press in Gaza city, called on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, to replace Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, because of what Bahar believes to be the ' illegality' of Fayyad's cabinet.

Bahar also called for a return to dialogue between Fatah and Hamas, asking Abbas to take a 'courageous' step for the best interests of Palestinian national unity, which 'could only get Palestinians rid of ongoing political turmoil'. President Abbas has outlawed Hamas since the latter wrested control over the Gaza Strip in June amidst a power struggle with Mahmoud Abbas’ rival Fatah party. Abbas formed a caretaker government in Ramallah, headed by Salam Fayyad.

For IMEMC.org this is Raphael Anderson.

The Israeli attacks

The West Bank

This week the Israeli army conducted at least 22 military invasions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank. During those incursions, Israeli troops kidnapped 28 Palestinian civilians, including 4 children. IMEMC's Elizabeth Smith with the details:

With those kidnappings this week, the number of Palestinians kidnapped by the Israeli army in the West Bank since the beginning of this year has risen to 2,553. The latest kidnappings were concentrated in the cities of Nablus and Jenin in the north of the West Bank, and in Hebron in the southern part of the West Bank.

Also this week the Israeli army attacked Palestinian media outlets in Nablus, shutting them down. According to local sources, early on Wednesday morning Israeli troops attacked the Afaq TV station in Nablus. Soldiers assaulted an employee of the station who was on duty at the time of the raid, before confiscating broadcasting equipment and computers. Following the raid the army issued the station with a closure notification, demanding the TV station and all its branches stop broadcasting. They have the right to appeal against the notification within 14 days. According to the same sources the military attacked other media offices - "An Najah press" and "Al Ruwad press" - where they confiscated computers and documents. The organizations that were attacked all had licenses from the Palestinian Authority, which controls the city of Nablus.

Israeli bulldozes belonging to the Jerusalem Municipality demolished a Palestinian home in the Old City of Jerusalem on Tuesday and attacked two brothers while they were attempting to remove their belongings from the house before the Israeli bulldozers leveled it.

The house belongs to Zainab Kabaja; Zeinab stated that her home was first demolished in May, 28, 2007, and the family was able to rebuild it through the help of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. But the Israeli authorities decided to level the house once again. The family appealed against the demolition order but the Jerusalem Municipality destroyed the house before a final court decision was made.

A member of the al Aqsa brigades, the armed wing of Fatah, was killed, and another three were injured during an Israeli attack on the old city of Nablus in the early hours of Tuesday morning. The sources identified the man as twenty-two-year-old Sulieman Al Qasas.Meanwhile, the Israeli military invaded other areas of the northern West Bank city and eyewitnesses reported military vehicles opening random fire on the areas.

For IMEMc.org this Elizabeth Smith.

The Gaza strip

The Israeli army launched a heavy assault against the coastal region this week, killing 9, while three additional patients have died in Gaza due to Israel's refusal to allow them to leave the strip for medical treatment, from Gaza; IMEMC's Ghassan Bannoura has more:

On Thursday night three Palestinians were killed during another Israeli air strike on a car in southern Gaza city. Medical sources said the corpses of three Palestinians were taken out dismembered from the targeted car, as pillars of smoke rose from the area of the attack. Israeli air strikes on Gaza have been widespread since Israel declared the coastal strip a ' hostile entity’, with more Israeli measures on the ground being taken. Those killed on Thursday were initially identified as members of Islamic Jihad.

Earlier that day, two Islamic Jihad fighters were wounded when Israeli forces shelled an area in the southern Gaza strip.

This week medical sources in the coastal region reported that four more patients have died due to Israel's refusal to allow them to leave the strip for medical treatment. Sources stated that Naser Muhra, Mahmoud Abu Hasna, Zuhair Hussain, and a baby who was less than a year old, joined the growing list of Gazans who have died as a result of not being allowed to leave the strip for treatment. The total number who have died in this manner now stands at 38 since Israel’s total closure of the Gaza strip borders.

On Tuesday six Palestinians were killed and 19 others wounded, during an Israeli army ground offensive in the southern Gaza Strip. Dr. Moa'wiya Hasanin, chief of the emergency department in the Palestinian health ministry, told IMEMC that a number of the wounded had to undergo surgery to amputate limbs and that the majority of those killed had burns all over their bodies.

Witnesses said that early on Tuesday a column of Israeli tanks rolled into eastern Rafah city in the southern Gaza Strip, cutting off the Salah Eldin main road, as soldiers took positions on the rooftops of nearby houses. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, confirmed in a statement, emailed to IMEMC, that a photojournalist, was moderately wounded by Israeli army fire during coverage of the attack.

Sources at the Palestinian resistance factions confirmed the death of six resistance
members, of whom three belonged to the Saraya aL-Quds Brigades of the Islamic Jihad and the others were members of the Salah Eldin brigades, of the Popular Resistance Committees.

Speaking to IMEMC of the Tuesday attacks, Kamal Mousa, spokesperson of the Gaza-European hospital, made clear that most of the injuries proved fatal, with burns covering the bodies, while the facial features of the corpses were unrecognizable.



For IMEMC.org, this is Rami Al Muoghari in Gaza.

Civil unrest

The attacks of unknown gunmen continue in Gaza while in the West Bank Palestinian forces arrests more Hamas activists, for the details here is IMEMC's Manar Jebreen.

Palestinian medical sources reported that four people have been killed and dozens injured on Friday, during a funeral procession in Gaza City. Witnesses said that an explosion suddenly ripped through the funeral of a Fatah resistance fighter, who was killed on Thursday by an Israeli air strike in southern Gaza. Dr. Mo'awiah Hassanin, head of the emergency department at the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said that among those injured were children and that most of the wounded sustained light injuries.

Unknown gunmen kidnapped a senior member of Palestinian of President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party on Friday morning. 'Omar Al Ghoul, the National affairs advisor of the appointed Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, had reportedly returned to Gaza on Thursday to attend the funeral procession of his mother-in law.

Al Ghoul is also a known Fatah leader who has criticized the Hamas movement on several occasions. Hamas took total control of the Gaza strip in mid June of this year after several months of bloody infighting with its rival Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party.

Shortly after the take over, Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, outlawed the Hamas group, installing a new government in Ramallah, headed by Salam Fayyad.

Hamas movement did not comment on the incident. Witnesses said that masked gunmen attacked and searched Al-Ghoul's home on Friday morning, before they took the Fatah official to an unknown destination.

In the meantime, Hamas has reported that during the week Fatah-loyal Palestinian security forces arrested at least 30 Hamas members throughout the West Bank.

For IMEMC.org this is Manar Jebreen.


Conclusion

And that’s just some of the news this week in Palestine. For constant updates, check out our website, www.IMEMC.org. Thanks for joining us from Occupied Bethlehem; this is Louisa White.