On Monday, the Foreign Minister of Germany visited Gaza and urged Israel to lift its blockade of the strip. However, he refused to meet Hamas, because its refusal to renounce violence and to accept Israel's rights to exist. Hamas officials slammed the move as "insulting".

In another issue Israeli media reported on Monday morning that, for the first time since the beginning of the second Intifada in 2000, army records indicate that there are no more “wanted” Palestinians in the northern part of the West Bank, and only a few in the southern part.

Also on Monday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in a Peace conference in Abu Dhabi that Palestinians will declare a sovereign state within a year, if negotiations with Israel fail.

In Jerusalem Israeli sources reveled on Monday that a group of Israeli fundamentalists attacked last week a Chilean tourist while he was walking through a park in Jerusalem, after “suspecting” that he was an Arab.

On Sunday, a mosque was destroyed by Israeli police on the Palestinian Bedouin town of Rahat, in southern Israel. The mosque was considered 'built without a permit', according to Israeli Lands Administration. Around 1,000 people gathered to protest the demolition and five of them were arrested.

Also on Sunday, Abdullah Abu Rahma, a leader of the non-violent movement in Palestine, currently imprisoned in an Israeli detention camp for “incitement”, faces two new hearings as Israeli prosecutors attempt to increase his sentence beyond the one year term he is now serving.

Meanwhile a document revealed on Monday show a deliberate policy by Israeli government that ignores the daily needs of the Gaza population and misses calculation of amounts of food needed their.

Those policies leave the Gaza residents without amount of foods and supplies, that are enough for nears starvation level. This document, which was made by Israeli officials, describes those policies as: "putting the people of Gaza on a diet".


And that all for today, thank you for joining you have been listing to Palestinian Today. For more updates, please visit our website at www.imemc.org. This report has been brought to you by Ghassan Bannoura and Husam Qassis.