A military F-16 aircraft belongs to the Israeli occupation army crashed off the coast of the Gaza Strip in the Mediterranean Sea.
The agency of France Press (AFP) quoted the spokesman for the Israeli army as saying that an "F-16 fighter jet crashed into the sea after its engine broke down," pointing out that the crew was rescued.
The Israeli reports said that the plane crashed off the coast of the Gaza Strip
Source : Ahlul Bayt News Agency
The escalating restrictions imposed by Israel on access to land along Gaza’s perimeter fence and to fishing areas along Gaza’s coast undermine the security and livelihoods of Palestinians, the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA) in the occupied Palestinian territories stated in a recent report.
According to the report, Israel has tightened its restrictions on the Gazans' access to the sea and to land located near the fence since September 2000 at the pretext of security concerns.
Up to 35 percent of Gaza’s agricultural land and as much as 85 percent of its fishing waters have been affected at various points, the report said.
The Palestinian access to farming land within 300 meters of the perimeter fence separating Gaza from the 1948 occupied lands is largely prohibited and risky.
Fishermen are currently allowed to access less than one third of the fishing areas allocated under the Oslo accords, about six out of the specified 20 nautical miles from the coast.
There are currently 3,500 registered fishermen in Gaza and 2,000 people work in fishing-related industries, the report noted.
The fish catch lost as a result of access restrictions between 2000 and 2012 is estimated at approximately 1,300 metric tonnes per year.
The report pointed out that these Israeli restrictions caused 95 percent of Gaza fishermen to receive regular international aid.
Prior to November 2012, access restrictions resulted in a loss of approximately 75,000 metric tonnes of agricultural produce, valued at 50.2 million dollars per year.
12 percent of the homes destroyed during operation Cast Lead in 2008/2009 was located in access restricted areas.
13 schools with 4,800 students and staff are located within 1,500 meters from the fence and have had class sessions disrupted due to Israel's enforcement of access restrictions.
Since June 2007, 214 Palestinians have been killed, including at least 127 civilians, and 825 injured, including at least 761 civilians, in the access restricted areas.
During the same period, five Palestinian fishermen were killed and 25 others were injured when the Israeli naval forces opened fire at them to enforce access restrictions.
Source : IMEC
Israel TV, Channel 2, has reported that Palestinian fighters were behind the attack against an Israeli Navy ship, paroling the Gaza shore on Wednesday at night.
The TV said that the shells detonated near the ship, without any direct impact, leading to no injuries on damage.
The fighters also apparently fired several rounds of live ammunition.
It added that the soldiers noticed six shells fired at their ship, and responded by firing dozens of rounds of live ammunition at the source of fire; no clashes have been reported.
The Israeli fire also failed to hit any of the fighters who managed to escape unharmed.
Source : Maan News Agency
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- The Egyptian army on Friday closed the Rafah crossing on the Gaza border until further notice due to unrest in Sinai.
Egyptian military officials informed the Palestinian side of the closure, said Maher Abu Sabha, Palestinian director of crossings and borders.
Due to Israel's blockade, the Rafah crossing is the only exit for most Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The Egyptian director of the Rafah terminal, Sami al-Mitwali, said the crossing was closed due to security unrest.
An Egyptian soldier was killed early Friday in coordinated rocket and machinegun attacks by Islamist militants on army checkpoints and a police base in Sinai.
Militants also attacked a military intelligence building in Rafah, witnesses said.
Two other soldiers were wounded when Islamist militants fired on an army checkpoint near the north Sinai village of al-Gura. Elsewhere, militants attacked a police base with rockets, security sources said.
Some militants in Sinai had threatened a violent response after Egypt's army toppled Islamist President Mohammad Mursi on Wednesday.
Chief justice Adly Mansour, 67, was sworn in as interim president on Thursday until new elections, at a ceremony broadcast live from the Supreme Constitutional Court.
The Islamists accuse the military of conducting a brazen coup against Mursi, Egypt's first democratically elected but controversial president, following massive protests calling for the Islamist's ouster.
Mursi's Musim Brotherhood movement has called for peaceful protests on Friday against the "coup," as police continue to hunt its leaders.
Egypt's military appealed for conciliation and warned against revenge attacks, as police rounded up senior Islamists.
The military said "exceptional and autocratic measures against any political group" should be avoided in a statement on its spokesman's Facebook page.
"The armed forces believe that the forgiving nature and manners of the Egyptian people, and the eternal values of Islam, do not allow us to turn to revenge and gloating," the army statement added.
Police arrested the Brotherhood's supreme leader Mohammed Badie "for inciting the killing of protesters", a security official told AFP.
Former supreme guide Mahdi Akef was also arrested, state television reported.
Mursi himself was "preventively detained" by the military, a senior officer had told AFP early Thursday, hours after his overthrow the night before, suggesting the ousted president might face trial.
Source : International Middle East Media Center
Sources at the Hamas-led Palestinian government in Gaza stated that a number of Turkish officials recently held a meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister of the Hamasl-led government in Gaza, Ismail Haniyya, and deputy Foreign Minister, Ghazi Hamad.
The meeting focused on arrangements and preparations of the planned visit.
The Turkish PM said that the protests taking place in Turkey initially caused a delay to the visit that was initially set for June.
The Hamas-led government in Gaza confirmed the reports, and said that a Turkish government delegation and Turkish media crews are currently in Gaza, and already held a meeting with Haniyya to discuss details of the planned visit.
Despite media reports of an addition delay to the visit, government sources in Gaza said that the planned July visit has not been delayed.
Source : Maan News Agency
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Islamic Jihad leader Ahmad al-Mdlal said Monday that Hamas police made a mistake in killing one of it's members during a gunfight and called for a fair inquiry into the death.
Hamas' interior ministry commissioned the inquiry Monday following the death of Raed Qassim Jundeyeih, a member of Islamic Jihad's militant wing, the Al-Quds Brigades, who died on Sunday after being shot a day earlier by Hamas police officers.
Al-Mdlal told Ma'an that his movement's relationship with Hamas "is still the same and has not changed," despite Islamic Jihad saying Sunday that it was temporarily suspending ties with the Gaza government.
Jundeyeih's family said the pathologist's report confirmed he had died of wounds caused by Hamas police bullets.
Hamas government spokesman Ihab al-Ghussein said: "I hope everyone will await the results of the commission of inquiry which has begun its work."
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said "contacts are continuing between Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which have strong ties".
The interior ministry said Jundiya had opened fire on police, prompting them to respond.
Police had gone to an address in Gaza City on Saturday to deliver summons orders to a member of the Jundeyeih family. Upon approaching the home, members of the family opened fire at the officers and Jundeyeih was wounded in the ensuing gunfight.
One of the Jundeyeih relatives is on the panel investigating the death.
The Islamic Jihad leader also reiterated earlier party comments that Jundeyeih had been a "wanted" man by Israel.
"Killing Raed Jundeyeih is like giving a free gift to Israel," al-Mdlal told Ma'an.
Islamic Jihad denies rocket fire
Al-Mdlal denied that Islamic Jihad had launched rockets into southern Israel on Sunday evening, saying: "Rocket fire is a normal response to the Israeli crimes."
The Israeli army shelled Gaza overnight in response to rocket fire, saying it targeted two weapon storage facilities and a rocket launch site and that Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system had intercepted two rockets.
Locals said four Islamic Jihad military sites were hit in the air raid, as well as tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border and empty areas.
Speaking to public radio on Monday morning, head of the parliamentary foreign and defense committee Avigdor Lieberman said Israel should consider reoccupying the Gaza Strip and "cleansing" it.
Source : Fars News Agency
TEHRAN (FNA)- Israeli military vehicles escorted bulldozers into a border area in central Gaza on Wednesday, locals said.
Seven bulldozers flanked by four military vehicles crossed into a border area near al-Bureij refugee camp at around 6 am, penetrating 300 meters into fields and leveling agricultural lands, witnesses told Ma'an.
Israeli drones were hovering at a low distance during the incident, locals added, with Israeli forces firing smoke bombs.
An Israeli army spokesman said there was "routine activity along the fence," without providing further details.
Source : Maan News Agency
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) -- Talks between Fatah and Hamas on Tuesday and Wednesday accomplished little as the parties failed to reach any agreement, a top Islamic Jihad official said Thursday.
Abu Imad al-Rifaei, the Islamist group's representative in a committee preparing for national elections, told Ma'an that the talks focused on the makeup of the Palestinian Legislative Council and the Palestinian National Council.
But he said neither Fatah nor Hamas seemed serious about ending the division and implementing a reconciliation deal signed in 2011.
Al-Rifaei, who also serves as Islamic Jihad's representative in Lebanon, blasted the talks as a "waste of time."
He expressed strong doubts that elections were on the horizon but he said if they took place, Islamic Jihad would field candidates for the national council and PLO executive committee. The faction does not participate in legislative or presidential elections, he noted.
Asked about the situation in Syria, al-Rifaei denounced Israel's bombing in early May of a regime facility in Damascus. He says Islamic Jihad stands by any country facing Israeli attacks and will respond as it sees fit
Source : http://old.mehrnews.com
TEHRAN, May 9 (MNA) –The leader of the Islamic Movement in Palestine has rejected supports for an Israeli plan to exchange lands with Palestinians.
Sheikh Raed Salah denounced Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the head of International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), for his fatwas (religious decree), and Qatari Emir for their support for Israeli land swap plan. “Al- Qaradawi is not Palestine’s representative; he does not have the right to issue fatwas about Palestinians; he issues fatwa on sanctioning Quds, but travels to Gaza under the support of the Zionists. He is like one who seeks the help of the enemy to damage his brother,” Salah emphasized.
“Neither Qatari Emir nor anyone else in the world would impose the land swap plan on us. They had better go and swap their own lands, and do not interfere with Palestinian lands, since these lands are Islamic waqf,” he added.
“I call for any Arab Muslim to come to pilgrimage to al-Aqsa mosque. God bestowed the Prophet with the Miraj while the mosque was under Roman influence, now, how would al-Qaradawi sanctions pilgrimage on al-Aqsa, but himself travels to Gaza under support of the Zionists,” Salah explained.
“If I were in Gaza, I would reject al-Qaradawi,” he added.
Source : islamicinvitationturkey.com
A high-ranking Hamas leader, Mahmoud al-Zahar, has denounced Qatari Emir’s plan for some changes in ‘Arabian peace.’ Hamad bin Jasim, whose country is the president of Arabian Peace Plan committee, said that “both sides should exchange the disputed lands based on 1967 borders, and go for a two state solution.”
Palestinian groups evaluated Jasim’s remarks as legitimizing Israeli settlements and as indifference on Israeli attempt to announce the Jerusalem as its capital. Mahmoud al-Zahar, Hamas senior leader, who was addressing the meeting of students in Gaza Islamic University, said that “Arab Ministers Council decisions in Washington are giving advantage to those who do not deserve it.”
Zahar addressed the Arab Ministers Council. “If this is your approach, then leave us and Palestinian issue alone, since we are better entitled to the right of defending it and would sacrifice our lives, and definitely we will be winner,” asserted he.
“We will not retreat from our lands, and would not exchange part of it with other part, and would not allow those who are not our representatives to bestow our rights to others,” he added. “1948 occupied territories are our right, and we would not exchange it with 1967 lands. Whole Palestine belongs to all Palestinians, and we reject the retreat, and state that no one other than the owners of these lands would live on them, and this is an everlasting principle,” Zahar said.
Analysts believe that Zahar’s remarks is crucial for a Hamas position, since he is an influential figure, and commander of Qassam Brigades, which no act would be done without his consent.
Zahar’s group is an effective Hamas faction. Zahar has opposed some Hamas members’ taking sides with Syrian opposition fighters.
Source : islamicinvitationturkey.com
The Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine has said the Israeli regime was planning to wage another war on the besieged Gaza Strip, Press TV reports.
The group’s military wing, the Al-Quds Brigades, has been holding military exercises in order to prepare its members for a possible Israeli aggression, the movement also said.
“The Zionist enemy is getting ready for a major military operation on Gaza. We expect an escalation in the coming days but we are not sitting idle. Our military wing has been training for another war and it will not be a cakewalk for Zionists when they come to confront our fighters,” said Khader Habib, a senior Islamic Jihad official.
The Israeli regime launched an eight-day war on Gaza last November, killing 177 Palestinians, including women and children.
Israel launched another war on the coastal enclave in December 2008-January 2009. More than 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the 22-day Israeli onslaught and thousands more injured.
Mustafa Sarsour, a college student, told Press TV he was sure Israel would wage another war on Gaza within days or weeks.
“Almost everyone you talk to in Gaza will tell you that they are worried about another war especially with continued Israeli threats,” he said.
Analysts say the Tel Aviv regime has been issuing threats as a tactic to stop Palestinians from resisting Israel’s aggression.
Hani al-Basous, a political analyst, said the Israeli forces might target leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in its new aggression as well as Palestinian infrastructure.
“This is part of Israelis psychological war … on people and military in the Gaza Strip and to threat the people to get them under pressure all the time,” he added
Source : Xinhua
GAZA, May 7 (Xinhua) -- The Hamas police on Tuesday repressed a rally held in southern Gaza in protest of recent Israeli airstrikes against Syria, witnesses said.
The protest was organized by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Khanyounis city, the witnesses said, adding several participants were beaten and four journalists were detained by Hamas' forces on the grounds of holding unlicensed rally.
The demonstrators waved Palestinian and Syrian flags as well as banners slamming the Israeli bombing in Damascus, and chanted slogans rejecting "any Israeli aggression against any Arab capital. "
Hamas, which took over the Palestinian enclave by force in 2007, had its supreme leadership based in Damascus for years.
When the Syrian unrest erupted in 2011, the Islamic movement refused to side with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and thus relocated its base to Doha, Qatar. Many leaders of the movement either returned to Gaza or moved to other Arab capitals.
Source : The Daily
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: The Gaza Strip's Hamas rulers have arrested several radical Salafists, the Palestinian movement's interior ministry said on Thursday, two days after Israel carried out an air strike on a militant in the territory.
"The internal security apparatus has arrested fanatics calling themselves Salafists, for security and criminal reasons.
There were no arrests made for ideological or political reasons," a ministry statement said.
"Four of those arrested were taken in on suspicion of stealing rockets belonging to Hamas, and two others for causing an unspecified explosion that resulted in "human and material damage," it added, without giving a total number.
The Mujahedeen Shura Council (MSC) Salafist group, one of whose members was killed in the air strike on Gaza City on Tuesday, said the jihadists were being detained for ideological reasons.
Salafists in Gaza -- who are considered more hardline than the Islamist Hamas -- have challenged the movement both over confrontations with Israel and the practice of Islamic rule, prompting it to crack down on their militant activities.
The MSC implicitly denied stealing any rockets.
Israel's air force targeted Haitham al-Mishal as he rode his motorcycle in western Gaza City on Tuesday, it said in a statement.
Israel said Mishal was involved in an April 17 rocket attack launched from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, adjoining Gaza, which struck the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat causing no casualties.
The MSC has claimed a number of rocket attacks in the past few months, all except that of April 17 being launched from the Gaza Strip.
Source : Fars News Agency
TEHRAN (FNA)- Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement, said the resistance groups' response to any future Israeli strike on Gaza will stun the Zionists much more than the Palestinians' response to the 8-day Israeli war on the Gaza Strip last November.
Spokesman of al-Quds Brigades Abu Ahmad stressed that the group treats each and every Israeli threat to Gaza seriously and will never be handcuffed and helpless against the Zionist enemy's invasions.
Meantime, he downplayed the Israeli threats as "empty" and said, "Palestinian resistance groups in the Gaza Strips, including the Quds Brigades, are prepared to face any scenario in the region."
Abu Ahmad said that the resistance movement has many unused cards in their hands for confronting Israel, and noted, "Future battles will be different for the Palestinian Resistance (movement) and we will stun the enemy more than before."
Israel triggered an 8-day fighting by assassinating the military chief of the ruling Hamas group on November 14 followed by dozens of airstrikes on Gaza.
In response, Palestinian groups fired over 1,500 missiles and rockets at Israel.
Palestinian resistance groups targeted Tel Aviv and areas near Jerusalem for the first time in the history of confrontations between the two sides, launching a rocket attack in a major escalation of hostilities as Israel pressed forward with relentless airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.
Israel called up thousands of reservists and massed troops along the border with Gaza, signaling a ground invasion of the densely populated seaside strip could be imminent.
But the rocket attacks on areas deep in the occupied territories (Israel) frightened the Israeli regime, and made it drop its aggression plans and ask for third party mediation.
Eventually, a Cairo-mediated ceasefire agreement, which took effect on Wednesday November 21, ended the Israeli attacks, which killed more than 165 Palestinians and injured about 1,269 others.
Source : Maan News Agency
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- The al-Ansar Brigades says it fired five rockets at Israeli targets on Tuesday in response to an airstrike that killed a 25-year-old Palestinian.
An Israeli military spokeswoman was not immediately familiar with any rockets landing in Israel.
The brigades, affiliated to the al-Ahrar movement, said the rockets were a response to the killing of Haitham al-Mishal and Israeli violations of a truce agreed in November.
"The occupation does not respect the truce nor fulfill its commitments," the group said in a statement. "The truce can go t hell."
Israel said its strike on a motorcycle west of Gaza City early Tuesday targete "a global jihad-affiliated terrorist" involved in an April 17 rocket attack o Eilat.
On Tuesday afternoon, witnesses reported two explosions in Rafah in th southern Gaza Strip. An Israeli army spokeswoman said there were n airstrikes in the area.
Source : Maan News Agency
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- The military wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine on Tuesday said it would respond to Israel's assassination of a Palestinian in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli warplanes on Tuesday fired at a motorcycle west of Gaza City, killing 25-year- old Haitham al-Mishal, a security guard at al- Shifa hospital, health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra said.
Israel says it targeted "a global Jihad-affiliated terrorist" involved in a rocket attack on Eilat.
The National Resistance Brigades said in a statement that it would respond to the strike and vowed to continue resistance until Palestine is liberated.
Source : Maan News Agency
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Israeli gunboats on Thursday opened fire toward Palestinian fishing boats off the coast of the Gaza Strip, a local official said.
Israeli forces opened fire at the boats off north-west Gaza as the fishermen as approached the three-mile limit Israel imposes along the coastline, said Mahfouth Kabariti, head of a federation for fishermen and water sports.
No injuries were reported, Kabariti told Ma'an.
Israel's army announced in February that the fishing zone for Palestinians in Gaza would be reduced from six to three miles following a rocket attack.
The zone had been extended to six miles as part of an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire that ended an eight-day conflict between Israel and Hamas in November.
Source : http://www.palestine-info
GAZA, (PIC)-- A Palestinian man was wounded on Tuesday evening when Israeli occupation forces (IOF) opened machinegun fire at Palestinian fields and houses in the central Gaza Strip.
Quds Press said that IOF soldiers in military watchtowers opened machinegun fire at houses in Breij refugee camp and at famers in nearby fields wounding the man.
Dr. Ashraf Al-Qudra, the health ministry’s spokesman, said that the 34-year-old man was hit with a bullet in his chest, describing his condition as stable.
The incident is the latest in a series of IOF violations of the calm agreement signed with Palestinian resistance factions in Gaza under Egyptian patronage in November last year.
Source : Al Akhbar English
Hamas, which governs in the Gaza strip, has arrested two hardline Islamists in connection with rocket attacks fired across the border, sources close to a Salafist group said Thursday.
The Hamas interior ministry, however, denied any arrests had been made for "resistance against the occupation."
Hamas's "internal security apparatus in the last two days arrested two mujahedeen. One was released after several hours. The other is still detained," a Salafist source told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The source said it was part of a "campaign to pursue Salafists after the targeting of Israel with rockets."
A Gaza-based Salafist group claimed firing rockets on Tuesday and Wednesday that landed in open fields, causing no damage or casualties. In response, Israel carried out two air strikes, also without causing harm.
Crossfire between Gaza and Israel began on Tuesday after the death of Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh, a Palestinian prisoner who died from cancer after allegedly being denied medical treatment in Israeli jails.
Protests and clashes have erupted in the West Bank as a response, and many cities observed a general strike Wednesday.
Two Palestinian teenagers were shot dead late Wednesday in one of the clashes by an Israeli army military post in Tulkarem.
The Islamist movement Hamas, which has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007, has regularly cracked down on hardline Salafists in the territory, notably in 2009.
"Our security apparatus is part of the resistance and does not arrest anyone who resists the occupation. On the contrary, we encourage resistance," Islam Shahwan, interior ministry spokesman, said.
The Mujahedeen Shura Council, meanwhile, urged "the rational- minded in Hamas to pressure its security to release Salafists" in a statement on Thursday.
In response to the rocket attacks Israel has tightened a maritime restriction barring Gaza fishermen from operating more than three nautical miles off the Mediterranean coast.
The already stringent limits were tightened from six miles on March 21 after Salafist militants fired two rockets at southern Israel as US President Barack Obama was visiting the country.
Israel also closed down Kerem Shalom, Gaza's only goods crossing, and imposed tight restrictions on travel into and out of the territory via the northern Erez terminal which was limited to medical emergencies only.
A week later, the restrictions on the two crossings were lifted and Kerem Shalom and Erez began operating as normal.
But the fishing limitations were left in place, Palestinian officials said, with the Israeli army confirming it was a political decision taken after an uptick in rocket fire this week.
Last week, two Israeli rights groups Gisha and B'Tselem, demanded that Israel lift the fishing restrictions, saying the measure amounted to "collective punishment."
Israeli combat jets attacked the desert areas of the Gaza Sector last night, making the first attack of Israel in the territory since the cease-fire agreement made in November 2012.
The attack is believed to have been carried out as a warning to Hamas in response to missile attacks
