Palestinian/ Israeli update 12/18/2016..Military takes over Hebron homes to secure settler celebration

Israeli forces kill Palestinian teen in West Bank

Military takes over Hebron homes to secure settler celebration
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Gazans want permanent reopening of Rafah crossing

World Needs to Stop Israeli Atrocities against Palestinians

TEHRAN (FNA)- The Israeli regime continues its several-decade-long clampdown and pressure on the Palestinians, while the world is giving reduced, and sometimes, no attention to their plights and to the suffering of blockaded people in the Gaza Strip because the Saudi-backed ISIL terrorism has sidelines all other issues.

This reduced attention can even be seen very readily in the number of aid cargoes that have been sent to Gaza in the last year. While many would risk their lives to get help to the beseiged Palestinian population until 2013, the number of freedom flotillas has undergone a sharp decrease in the last three years.

The last attempt was on May 10, 2015 when a group of vessels planning to break the naval blockade of the Gaza Strip by Israel started its journey towards the besieged enclave from Sweden.

The “Freedom Flotilla III” stopped in several European cities and ports along the way to Gaza and was joined by a number of politicians, activists, journalists and artists from different countries. However, it was finally intercepted by the Israeli navy on June 29 in the international waters, and many of the people onboard were either arrested or deported. #FF3 was one of several efforts in the recent years to break the illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip, which the Israeli military and IDF rendered ineffective.

Among the people aboard the Freedom Flotilla III, consisted of one Swedish vessels and three Greek boats, were Moncef Marzouki, the former President of Tunisia; Estefanía Torres Martínez and Ana Miranda Paz, two Spanish Members of the European Parliament; Özlem Cekic, a former deputy in the Danish Parliament; Åsmund Grøver Aukrust, a Norwegian politician with the Labor Party and a Member of Norwegian Parliament and several Australian, Canadian, French, German, Italian, New Zealander, Swedish and Turkish journalists, university professors and activists.

Fars News Agency arranged an interview with Prof. David Heap, a Canadian scholar, activist and spokesperson for the international Freedom Flotilla Coalition who was part of this flotilla and has firsthand accounts of the mistreatment of the flotilla members by the Israeli commandoes and the interception of the Marianne of Gothenburg ship on the international waters.

Mr. Heap is a steering committee member of the Canadian Boat to Gaza, part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition and one of the organizing groups for Freedom Flotilla III. He is an Associate Professor of French and Linguistics at the University of Western Ontario. He was on board the Tahrir vessel when it was stopped by Greek authorities in July 2011, and again in November 2011 when captured by the Israeli navy………..read interview here….World Needs to Stop Israeli Atrocities against Palestinians

Your Morning News From Israel – December 18, 2016