Palestine Today 062509

Palestinians stop settler attempt to take over a house in East-Jerusalem as Cyprus prevents Free Gaza boats from leaving its port to sail to Gaza, these stories and more coming up stay tuned.
The News Cast
Palestinian residents of Sheik Jarrah inEast-Jerusalem, managed to stop a group of Israeli settlers from taking over a house twice during the night of Wednesday on Thursday.
The settlers tried to overrun the house to take control of it. Both times they came, the Palestinians stood their ground and prevented the settlers from entering the house. The settlers were not accompanied by Israeli police and were surprised to find the Palestinians in the house.
Israel made known on Thursday that it will largely keep its military forces out of four West Bank cities, to try to boost a Palestinian security campaign. The cities involved are Bethlehem, Ramallah, Jericho and Qalqilya and the campaign is supported by the US.
Israel reserved itself the right to invade the four cities, if cases arose where fighters in the area were poised to attack Israeli targets.

Sources from the Palestinian Authority state that with this exception the promise is unlikely to change the reality on the ground.

At the same time Israeli forces detained between 7 and 9 Palestinians during pre-dawn invasions in different areas of the West Bank.
Four of the Palestinians were taken from their homes in Balata refugee camp in the northern West Bank city of Nablus. The army invaded and toured the camp around 2 am.

Other arrests were made in the village of Bil’in, in the central West Bank, close to Ramallah.
The US-based Free Gaza Movement, that in the past has successfully sailed to Gaza to break the siege of the Strip, was stopped by Cypriot shipping officials from leaving the sea port on Thursday. The officials stated that it was for inspection requirements.
The Free Gaza movement planned to sail to Gaza with two vessels, carrying medical supplies, 33 activists and cement. Israel bans imports of cement, steel or other building supplies to Gaza, saying militants could use them for military purposes. One of the vessels was to carry 15 tons of cement to rebuild some of the houses that were destroyed during the recent war.


Thank you for joining us from occupied Bethlehem. You have been listening to Palestine Today from the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org. This report has been brought to you by Katherine Orwell.