The decade-long siege of Gaza has ground the economy to a halt. “I don’t own anything else now except these debts,” says Sameh al-Madhoun, who used to own a car dealership but is now held in a Hamas jail in Gaza.
Manal Massalha writes from Gaza,”It’s disastrous to be a cancer patient in Gaza. It’s humiliating and undignified. It’s being sentenced to a slow death. Cancer treatment is not available in Gaza and access to treatment outside of Gaza is controlled by the Israelis, the Egyptians and the Palestinian Authority, none of whom seem to care, take our condition seriously or deal with us in urgency. For them we’re just numbers.”
IMEMC reports: On Friday, March 2 dozens of Palestinians, accompanied by Israeli and international peace activists, marched in Bil’in village marking the 13th anniversary of ongoing popular nonviolent resistance against the illegal Israeli Annexation Wall.
Christian leaders in Jerusalem announced Sunday they will close one of Christianity’s most sacred sites, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, in protest of an Israeli bill targeting church-owned lands, and the repeal of the church’s tax-exempt status. “This reminds us all of laws of a similar nature which were enacted against the Jews during dark periods in Europe,” Christian leaders said in a statement.
Violence / Detentions — West Bank / Jerusalem Nine Palestinians injured on 11th Friday of…
Last year 54 patients from Gaza in need of an urgent medical transfer to Israel for treatment died while waiting for their paper work to be processed by Israeli military authorities, reports Al Jazeera: ” In 2017, Israeli authorities approved fewer than half the medical permit requests it received, which were tied to appointments and treatment sessions in hospitals across the occupied territories and Israel – the lowest level since 2008. More than 25,000 permit requests were submitted to Israeli authorities. Of those, 719 were refused, often under the pretext of security. Another 11,281 applications are still pending approval – meaning thousands of people are in a state of jeopardy. Samir Zaqout, Al Mezan director, told Al Jazeera that there is no “real rational reason” why patients in need of urgent medical assistance are denied hospital access.”
In their manhunt for the Palestinian teen suspected of stabbing and killing an Israeli settler on Monday, Israeli forces raided Nablus on Wednesday and injured 110 Palestinians, including one man run over by a Jeep. A Palestinian youth, Khaled Walid Tayeh, 22, was killed, one of three Palestinians killed this week by Israeli forces.
On Sunday Israel demolished two school buildings in the West Bank community of Abu Nuwwar, east of Jerusalem. The buildings housed 25 third and fourth-grade students and were built in September with funds from the European Union.
A group of extremist settlers uprooted more than 100 olive trees from the village of Yasuf, east of Salfit, on Wednesday morning. The settlement of Rahalim is the 25th illegal settlement in the Salfit governorate.
A hospital in the northern Gaza Strip suspended its services on Monday due to a lack of fuel, the hospital and a spokesperson for the Hamas-run health ministry said. “All health services provided at Beit Hanoun hospital were suspended due to power cuts and the lack of fuel for the hospital’s backup generators,” the hospital wrote in a statement posted to its official Facebook page.