Middle East Monitor - The Latest from the Middle East

According to the Jerusalem Newspaper on May 23, 2013, the website for Israel's Seventh Channel television station said that on Wednesday afternoon, the Knesset has approved the first reading of the bill named "Jenin - Jenin" which relates to what Israel calls the "defamation” of Israeli soldiers.

The bill was presented by members of the Knesset; Uni Steffen of the Jewish Home, Yariv Levin of Likud Beiteinu and Nahman Shay of the Labor Party.

The Palestinian government in Gaza has demanded that the United Nations and the international and Arab communities form a fact-finding committee into Zionist allegations that Israel is not responsible for the assassination of Palestinian child, Mohammed El-Dura, at the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000.

On September 29, 2000 the Israeli occupation killed the child El-Dura at the junction of Martyrs and Netzarim street South of Gaza City where he was sheltering behind his father, Jamal, who himself suffered serious injuries. A French television camera documented the execution as his father screamed and yelled.

Author: William Sutcliffe
Paperback: 291 pages
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Language: English
ISBN: 978-1-4088-2809-0

Book Review by Amelia Smith

Growing up in the (fictional) settlement of Amarias in the Occupied Territories of Palestine, thirteen-year-old Joshua has a limited idea of what is beyond the separation wall. He doesn't need to. Everything is this side of the wall, including his school, his best friend, the shops and his football.

Filippo Grandi, the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), declared on Wednesday during a visit to Syria that the two conflict has resulted in the displacement of about three-quarters of the Palestinian refugees in Syria from their camps.

Cadet training at schools launched by the Ministry of Education in the Gaza Strip has faced much scrutiny, questioning and criticism by the Palestinian government in the West Bank. The government in Gaza defended it as a project, while the government in the West Bank has severely criticized it as has the Israeli occupation.

Hamas were happy with the training and its outcomes which it said were positive, despite the high costs added to its already exhausted budget as a consequence of the Israeli siege, as this training aims at achieving more than one goal.

The Islamic movement depends on the upcoming generation to carry out its clearly adopted project of resistance. This project is largely dependent on the youth and it feels that this generation's ideology is being targeted. Nurturing this generation is Hamas' primary goal.

Egypt's minister of Energy and Electricity, Ahmad Imam, has announced that an electricity project connecting Egypt and Saudi Arabia would allow for the exchange of 3,000 megawatts of energy, with Egypt becoming the central point of regional electricity connection.

Imam said that Egypt is currently linked with Europe and Turkey via its link with Jordan and Syria on one side and with Morocco and Europe via Libya from another side. It is also linked with Sudan based on twinning projects, and with the other African countries via Sudan and Ethiopia.

In the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, the Israelis have the most compliant of "partners for peace" ready and willing to make huge concessions and yet illegal settlements continue to grow; human rights violations continue apace; and 65 years of occupation and oppression look set to become endless. This tells us all we really need to know about the mindset of Israel and its leaders, and "right or wrong" supporters: they are not interested in peace in any form, and certainly not a peace in which justice is also given to the victims of Israeli aggression over the past half-a-century and more.

The Gulf Cooperation Council program to reconstruct Gaza continues to fund street and road rehabilitation and maintenance projects in the Gaza Strip and has granted $35.7 million to Gaza municipalities through the Islamic Development Bank in Jeddah.

The Director General of the department of coordination and facilitation of aid in PECDAR, Wael Salah, has made a statement explaining that the projects funded included a number of roads and streets in need of repair and maintenance in order for them to be suitable for traffic and to prevent accidents.

He also added that most municipalities in the Strip will benefit from these projects, and stressed the program's interest in the road sector as it significantly impacts people's lives and the mobility of the residents.

It has been announced that four Palestinian patients were poisoned by carbon monoxide gas sent to Gaza hospitals as nitrous gas.

Palestinian Health Minister, Mofeed al-Mokhalalati, affirmed that four patients were poisoned by the carbon monoxide gas as they were injected with it in the belief that it was nitrous gas used in anaesthesia.

Al-Mokhalalati said that Israel is being blamed for the poisoning as it is the sole source of nitrous gas brought to Gaza hospitals.

The rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas announced last week that they have reached an agreement to form a transitional government to run Palestinian institutions in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and are preparing for general elections within the next three months.

A few days after this, deputy Hamas leader, Mosa abu-Marzouq, told the London based newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that there are no discrepancies between the two parties and both maintain good contacts with each other.

On Tuesday night at Senate House, SOAS University, Middle East Monitor (MEMO) hosted an evening with former Egyptian presidential candidate Abdallah Alashaal. Alashaal founded the Free Egypt Party after the 2011 revolution; he is a former Egyptian diplomat with knowledge of Gulf, Arab, Islamic and African affairs and is currently head of the National Council for Human Rights.

The event, chaired by Professor Bill Bowring who is a barrister at Field Court Chambers, focused on the past and future of Egypt and Palestine’s relationship. Bowring stated he had a long time interest in peace in the Middle East after visiting Palestine in 1988 at the beginning of the first Intifada. Prior to this he had "no interest whatsoever in international law, human rights or humanitarian law, but being there, in those circumstances, really opened my eyes." In May 2011, Bowring and a group of colleagues, housing lawyers specializing in eviction, visited East Jerusalem and published the report 'Enforcing Housing Rights: The Case of Sheikh Jarrah' on the results of their fact-finding mission.

It is not surprising, or even unexpected, to see settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem attacking and threatening the lives of Palestinians, destroying their properties, ruining their farms and targeting their holy sites. These attacks have not stopped since the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem and since settlements and judaisation in the region began.

To list examples, it would be enough to mention the attempts of these settlers to assassinate three elected Palestinian Mayors: Basam Al shakaa from Nablus, Karim Khalaf from Ramallah, and Ibrahim Altawil from Albira in 1980. Yet they also attacked students of Hebron University in 1984, attempted to poison water tanks at the schools of Jenin municipality in 1984, and stationed Rabbi Kiryat Arba in front of Dheisheh refugee camp for two years. In addition, settler Baruch Goldstein committed the massacre of the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron in 1993.

A Palestinian agricultural researcher has succeeded in producing 7 to 12 ears of wheat from a single seed each containing exactly 100 seeds.

This is one of four other successful experiments carried out by the agricultural engineer, Ali Odwan, the head of Beit-Hanoun Agricultural School.

Odwan expected that the result of his new successful experiment would increase wheat yields in the Gaza Strip because it doubles the wheat produced. "About 24 per cent of Gaza's land is, which is mainly deserted agricultural spaces near the Gaza borders, will be developed," he said.

In the wake of the liberation of the seven Egyptian soldiers kidnapped by armed groups in the Sinai Peninsula, Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi on Wednesday called for the kidnappers to give up their arms saying: "Weapons must only be carried by the army and the police."

In his first speech after receiving the soldiers and their families in Almaza military airbase in Cairo, Morsi said: "Those who possess arms must submit them to the government and those who are oppressed must raise a complaint. Then, over all law enforcement will be achieved."