The Baptist Church in west Jerusalem has been attacked by Jewish extremists. Anti-Christian slogans were scrawled on the walls and three vehicles belonging to the church had their tyres slashed. The deeply offensive Hebrew graffiti included, “We will crucify you” and “Death to Christianity”; profanities about Prophet Jesus, peace...

An Israeli court has agreed to release Khader Adnan after 66 days of his hunger strike, which he started in protest at his imprisonment under so-called “administrative detention”. The Israeli Justice Ministry said that Adnan, a leading member of the Islamic Jihad Movement, would be released in April. Adnan’s...

Jordan’s Prime Minister Awn Al Khasawneh has revealed his country’s intention to invite the Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Meshaal to visit Jordan again. Meshaal was in Amman recently accompanied by Qatar’s Crown Prince. Speaking to the local media, Mr. Al Khasawneh said, “There will be another invitation for...

A study conducted by Al-Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage in Israel has revealed that Al-Aqsa Mosque and its surrounding area has been subjected to around 100 attacks and violations in 2011 alone. The study noted that the attacks varied between physical attacks and plots which pose threats to...

Arab writer and intellectual Fahmi Howeidi has warned of a plot by internal forces to thwart the Muslim Brotherhood’s political plans for Egypt’s economic crisis. The intention, he claims, is to dent ordinary Egyptians’ confidence in the majority group in the new parliament. Howeidi made his claims in an...

The Israeli occupation authorities have transferred 120 Palestinian prisoners from a prison in the Negev desert to an unknown location. The prisoners were not allowed to take any luggage or belongings with them. In a statement released to the media, detainees said that prison officers entered cells with guns...

The Egyptian authorities have told the United Nations that they do not require the international body’s help to draft the proposed new constitution. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Amr Roshdy said that his country was grateful to the UN but had declined the offer of help. Addressing a press conference Cairo,...

The Secretary-General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, has condemned the attacks by Jewish extremists on a Baptist church in the city of Jerusalem. Offensive graffiti was scrawled on the church wall, including profanities about Prophet Jesus, peace be upon him, and his mother Mary. Property belonging...

A spokesman for Hamas has said that the results of the meeting of the Islamic Resistance Movement’s Political Bureau, held in Cairo this week, “are a testament to the strength and cohesion of the group”. In a press statement, Sami Abu Zuhri explained that the “positive atmosphere and the...

Jewish settler groups stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque on Thursday morning, under the protection of the Israeli security forces which prevented hundreds of Palestinian worshippers from entering the mosque to protect it from the extremists. Sources in occupied Jerusalem said that the city is tense after the incursion. It was confirmed...

EXCLUSIVE PICTURES Students at Birzeit University have staged a sit-in on campus in protest at political detentions and summonses being issued against them by the Palestinian Authority’s Security Forces in the West Bank. The students are members of parties belonging to the Islamic Bloc. The sit-ins began last Thursday...

A UN committee on Palestinians affairs in the occupied territories has expressed its concern that the Israeli government is continuing to ignore international calls to halt its illegal settlement practices. The Israeli government has approved 500 new housing units in the north of the occupied West Bank. In a...

A two-day conference of the international committee for the “Global March to Jerusalem” opened in Amman on Sunday. Members of both the executive and central committees of the march, representing more than 60 countries, were present. The head of the Jordanian committee taking part in the meeting, Abdullah Obeidat,...

EXCLUSIVE PICTURES The Egyptian parliament has convened at the invitation of the country’s military rulers to select an assembly which will be tasked with drafting Egypt’s new constitution. Wrangling has already begun over the shape the new document, which will determine the balance of power between the army-backed executive...

The Israeli occupation authorities have issued notices of their intention to demolish a solar energy project which provides the only source of electricity for a number of Palestinian villages south of Hebron. The head of the People’s Committee in Yatta confirmed that the Israelis told the residents of the...

A high-ranking Palestinian source has claimed that the delay in the formation of the Palestinian unity government, which, it was agreed between Hamas and Fatah, will be headed by Mahmoud Abbas, follows a request from Abbas. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the source said that Abbas told the Hamas...

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has attacked President Mahmoud Abbas for his speech at the opening of the International Conference for Defending Jerusalem in Qatar. Abbas condemned Israel’s violations in the occupied city of Jerusalem, including illegal settlements and the country’s Judaisation policy. Netanyahu’s office issued a statement immediately,...

Mustafa El-Barghouthi, the Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative movement and an elected legislator, has reiterated that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Palestinian people. “All of the Israeli occupation authority’s actions in the city are illegal, void, and do not lend any legitimacy to the ongoing...

EXCLUSIVE PICTURES This month, the news has been dominated by the ever worsening situation in Syria. Within the Palestinian arena, the case of Khader Adnan; the West bank activists who risked his life and health to draw global attention to the plight of Palestinians subject to arbitrary Israeli administrative...

A spokesman for Fatah’s Office of Information and Culture, Ahmed Assaf, has described Israel’s raids on the Watan and Al-Quds TV stations as “state terrorism” and a violation of international laws that guarantee freedom of information. In a media statement, Mr. Assaf said, “The attacks carried out by the...

Media sources in Israel have revealed that the Israeli Transport Minister and Railway Authority have prepared a blueprint for the extension of the country’s railway network to service the illegal Jewish settler communities across the occupied West Bank. The scheme being developed by Yisrael Katz is set to bring...

The Deputy Minister of Health in Gaza has issued a warning about the massive problem of electricity cuts in the besieged territory. Dr. Hasan Khalaf described the cuts as a real danger to the already very difficult health conditions in the Gaza Strip. Pointing to the fact that around...

The Arab Affairs Committee of the People’s Assembly in Cairo has recommended making a legal study of the crossings between Egypt and Gaza and how they operate. The purpose is to facilitate the transportation of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people and to supply Gaza with fuel, on the...

Senior PLO committee member Saeb Erekat has called on United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy Catherine Ashton to intervene for the release of a Palestinian woman who has been on hunger strike for 18 days. Hana Shalabi is protesting against the...

Israel’s Hebrew-language Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper said yesterday that the country’s parliament, the Knesset, is to look into an unprecedented proposal submitted by extreme right-wing parliamentarian Danny Danon. The Likud MK wants the Knesset to establish a parliamentary committee to investigate the activities of its elected members who belong to...

EXCLUSIVE PICTURES Yesterday evening , the Palestine Institute for Culture held an awards ceremony at the Red Coral Hotel in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, to recognise Palestinian cultural creativity. The ceremony was attended by a number of cultural, social and political figures alongside a host of representatives from the...

Dr Ali Al-Salaby of the International Union for Muslim Scholars has played down the fears about Libyan unity as the margin between freedom and decentralisation of the government widens. The specialist in Libya’s Islamic affairs insists that the unity of Libya “represents the common interest of the Libyans, just...

In what is being seen as an extension of the commercialisation of Israel’s formal Judaisation policies, an Israeli company has sparked wide condemnation for marketing a new lighter which has the Israeli flag superimposed on a picture of the Dome of the Rock in occupied Jerusalem’s Noble Sanctuary of...

The Israeli occupation authorities have renewed the administrative detention order against the Secretary of the Palestinian Legislative Council. Mahmoud Ramahi MP, from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, will be kept in detention for a further four months. According to human rights workers, this is the fourth time in...

The Israeli occupation authorities have issued around 100,000 administrative detention orders against Palestinians since 1967, according to an official report issued by the Public Relations section of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. The report accuses the Israelis of imprisoning administrative detainees, without charge or trial, based on individual orders made...

Sources in Egypt claim that officials from three Nile Basin countries are exercising pressure on Cairo to sign the Cooperative Framework Agreement which would regulate the river between the countries through which it passes. The move would cancel Egypt’s right to veto the building of dams and alter Egypt’s...

On International Women’s Day, 8th March, the Palestinian Working Woman’s Society for Development along with The Coalition of Women for Peace and several other women’s and human rights organisations, has held a mass rally at the Qalandia military checkpoint in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The demonstration sent a strong...

A new Turkish-owned Arabic-language satellite channel plans to convey a positive image of Turkey to Arab viewers. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is following developments at the channel closely and hopes that it will become a media and cultural bridge between Turks and Arabs. His government is encouraging partnership...

The Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, has urged the people of Libya to preserve their national unity and the territorial integrity of their country. He called upon all Libyans to rally around the Transitional National Council as the sole legitimate representative of the...

The Palestinian Authority has demanded that the Israeli occupation authorities should hand over a detailed map showing where Israel’s army has laid land mines in the occupied West Bank. The demand comes following the death of the two children in an explosion near Hebron. Zayed Jaradat, 12, and Hamza...

Hebrew-language newspapers in Israel have launched a strong attack on Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the annual conference of the leading Israeli lobby group in the United States. The Israeli Prime Minister told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that it would be Israelis who pay the price of...

Dr. Mohamed Badie, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, has visited Pope Shenouda III, the Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of Saint Macarius, at the cathedral in east Cairo. The head of the Coptic Church has not been well recently. A statement issued by the Brotherhood on 8...

Egypt’s foreign minister, Mohammed Amr, has condemned the ongoing Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, which has left 14 Palestinians dead and many injured since Friday. In a press statement on Saturday, Amr said that his country was seriously concerned about the unprovoked aggression, adding that Cairo had called...

Israel’s latest missile strikes on the besieged Gaza Strip have been described as “more extrajudicial executions” by a leading member of the PLO Executive Committee. Dr. Hanan Ashrawi said that this is the way in which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “wants to destabilise the region, provoke the Palestinians...

EXCLUSIVE PICTURES The Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, has condemned strongly the serious aggression carried out by Israeli forces on the Gaza Strip, which have led to at least 18 Palestinians being killed, with many more wounded. Professor Ihsanoglu said that such military...

The Egyptian foreign ministry has announced that the Egyptian embassy in Madrid has recovered a number of priceless antiquities which were smuggled out of Egypt in 1999 by an international gang. Egypt’s ambassador in the Spanish capital, Ayman Zainaldin, said that he had learned in September 2010 that the...

The leader of the Tunisian Al-Nahda (Renaissance) movement, Sheikh Rashid Al-Ghannouchi, has said that the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, “is compatible with Israel’s aggressive nature”. He believes that the Zionist state is undergoing an “ageing” process due to the perceived risk of the Arab revolts and...

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has condemned the latest Israeli aggression against the people of Gaza, saying that the support given to Benjamin Netanyahu on his visit to Washington prompted the Israeli Prime Minister to act at this time. In a statement issued on 12 March, the Brotherhood said...

Illegal Jewish settlers have uprooted and stolen 250 olive tree saplings from the town of Sier near Hebron, in the southern part of the Occupied West Bank. According to the Land Research Centre in Hebron, the Jews came from the settlement of Masada. In a statement, the Centre quoted...

The Islamic Resistance Movement has condemned the position of the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, with regards to the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip. At least 25 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since last Friday. Hamas called Ban’s stance on the matter “blatant bias towards the...

EXCLUSIVE PICTURES Israel resumed its air-strikes on the Gaza Strip today with two missiles fired at a wood factory in Gaza city. This latest unprovoked attack comes just two days after Egypt brokered a truce between Israel and the resistance factions in Gaza. Today’s attack set alight a huge...

The Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, has drawn attention to Israel’s continued violation of freedom of worship in Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories. Sheikh Hussein asserted that the Israeli government’s recent announcement that it would be closing the Ibrahimi Mosque to Muslim worshippers for two days next...

EXCLUSIVE PICTURES The tenth international Miles of Smiles convoy arrived in the Gaza Strip earlier this week. 114 internationals, many of them women, from several countries crossed into the Strip from Rafah; bringing essential aid to its besieged civilian population. As in previous visits, the convoy delivered specially equipped...

The Director of Jerusalem’s Religious Endowments (Waqf) Foundation, Sheikh Azzam Al-Khatib, has declined an invitation from the Israeli parliament to discuss the effects of the demolition of monuments in Al-Aqsa Mosque with the Committee for Education and Sports. A statement from Al Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage, which...

Officials within the Israeli prison authority have expressed concern about the increasing phenomenon of Palestinian prisoners, especially administrative detainees, going on hunger strike. The numbers have risen after Khader Adnan went on hunger strike for 66 days resulting in a decision not to extend his detention and for him...