Palestine Today 071309

Settlers destroy farm lands and the Israeli Jerusalem municipality demolishes a Palestinian house, these stories and more coming up stay tuned.

The News Cast

Israeli settlers set fire to and destroyed Palestinian owned lands on Monday that belong to villagers of Saffa near the southern West Bank city of Hebron.

The damaged 37 acres contained olive trees, grape vines, the farmers said. They added that the settlers came from the nearby illegal settlement of Beit Ein.

Mohamed Awwad, from the Palestinian Solidarity campaign, told reporters that the Israeli military stopped fire fighter brigades from reaching the lands to stop the fire.

Awwad added that the military allowed the Israeli fire fighter brigades to stop the fire when it started to reach the settlement. By then the fire had already caused great losses for the Palestinian farmers.

The Israeli municipality of Jerusalem demolished on Monday two Palestinian owned homes located in East Jerusalem, in one of the cases Israeli forces attacked the family that owned the house.

The municipality says the houses were built without the needed permission.
Local sources said that soldiers attacked the owner of one of the demolished houses and his mom when they did not want to evacuate their house, located in Beit Hanina. Troops also kidnapped the owner's brother, witnesses reported.

Israeli occupied Jerusalem in 1967. Since then it has rarely given Palestinian residents permissions to built homes, while it continue to built settlements in and around the city, an act which is illegal by international law.

Earlier on Monday The Israeli military kidnapped three Palestinian civilian during pre dawn invasions targeting northern West Bank communities. The military said that the kidnapped men were on the army's “Wanted List”.

Conclusion

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 Ghassan Bannoura.