CONFERENCE RELEASE: Palestinian Shatat Conference convenes in Vancouver for Return and Liberation

May 15th, 2013 – In an effort to unite the Palestinian community through adherence to fundamental principles predicated on return and liberation, Palestinian activists and their allies in North America convened on unceded Coast Salish territories at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada from May 3 – 5, 2013.

With the firm belief that Palestinians in the Shatat should be actively engaged and invested in advancing the Palestinian cause as we commemorate 65 years of Nakba, participants discussed various issues, including, among others, accurate and accountable representation, defining the relationship of Palestinians in North America with Palestinians inside Palestine and the refugee camps, and finding methods to confront Zionist settler colonialism inside and outside of Palestine.

According to Khaled Barakat, a member of the organizing committee of the conference, “at a time when the right of return is under attack and Palestinian land is under threat from occupation attacks and so-called ‘land swaps’, the voice of Palestinians in shatat must be raised. The conference is a critical step towards addressing these concerns, and a new forum to engender positive changes in the Palestinian national liberation movement.”

The program of the conference included workshops spanning various topics, such as strengthening Palestinian organizing in the Shatat, Palestinian shatat participation and leadership in the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, forging joint struggles with justice movements in North America, gender and queer issues, combating Zionism and normalization, the centrality of the right of return to Palestinian liberation, discourses on national unity and addressing issues regarding representation and the Shatat’s relationship with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

The conference, which featured Palestinian freedom fighter Leila Khaled, who greeted conference attendees for a one-hour presentation via Skype in which she called for Palestinian national unity on the basis of resistance and struggle for return and liberation saluted the Palestinian prisoners in their fight for freedom and liberation, and reaffirmed their commitment to strengthen the Palestinian national liberation movement.

Conference participants included members of Idle No More, as well as other longtime indigenous activists; conference participants dined on bannock donated by Indigenous chefs and a Wet’suwet’en drum group introduced Khaled. According to Omar Shaban, director of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) at UBC, “it is important to recognize, over and again, that this conference was held on unceded indigenous territory, and that the struggle of the Palestinian people in the Shatat is incomplete without recognizing and joining the struggle of the indigenous people of Canada and the United States.”

Throughout the various discussions which spanned various points of views, political perspectives and diverse ideologies, attendees vowed to continue the conversation on forging a united front against Zionist colonization in Palestine. Conference participants formed a follow-up committee, which will be releasing a proposed action plan for Palestinian mobilization in the North American diaspora in the coming weeks.

For more information please contact:
Omar Shaban
604-379-4050
info@palestinianconference.org
palestinianconference.org

To get involved with these initiatives and the follow-up work of the conference, please contact info@palestinianconference.org.

The points of unity of the conference and its follow-up committee are as follows:

May 2013 marks the 65th anniversary of the Nakba, and the 65th year of the ongoing struggle for Palestinian refugees’ return and the liberation of Palestine.

1. The Palestinian people are one people and our cause is one cause. Our objective is to revive the Palestinian national liberation movement and build the national institutions of the Palestinian people based on popular participation and direct democracy, in order to achieve the liberation of the land and people of Palestine and the implementation of the right of Palestinian refugees to return their homes.

2. The conflict with the settler colonialist state of Israel will only be resolved through the dismantling of the racist settler colonial nature of the state, meaning decolonization from Zionism, in all its forms, social, economic and political.

3. The right of return is the first and foremost step to the exercise of our right to self-determination.

4. Based on history, language, culture and geography, Palestine is an integral part of the Arab world and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.

5. Palestine is part and parcel of international resistance to colonialism, settler colonialism, imperialism and Zionism. The Palestinian people’s struggle is the struggle of an indigenous population directly connected to national liberation movements around the world facing the same powers, including the struggle of Indigenous peoples of North America, where this conference is taking place.

6. This effort is part of the struggle to achieve the basic right of Palestinians to elect our representatives in a democratic manner, and to overcome all obstacles being placed in front of our people in Palestine and in the shatat. As Palestinians in shatat, we have a right to representation and raise the voice of the shatat in our national liberation movement.

7. Palestinians have the right to resist injustice and occupation in order to achieve the liberation of their land and people.

8. The governments of the United States and Canada are directly responsible for apartheid, colonization and occupation in Palestine, through their diplomatic, political, military and economic support for the state of Israel. We recognize the US and Canada to be settler colonies built on indigenous lands.

9. We have the responsibility to confront the role of the US and Canada, hold the governments of the US and Canada accountable, and to build alliances with oppressed peoples and communities in North America.

10. We recognize the leadership and central role of Palestinian women in the national liberation movement, in this initiative, and in political representation.

(Source / 16.05.2013)

Gaza’s children entertainment project

A continuation of the projects that we have set up entertainment in the past years and documented on the website.

We are in the process of implementing several projects in the next few weeks, and these projects are competent to the children of Gaza, who still suffer the presence of violence in the Palestinian territories, especially in the Gaza Strip.

This geographical area small and inhabited by one million eight thousand Palestinian citizens suffer from a crippling blockade and a fierce war between now and then destroy the calm that they live within a few months to be surprised to escalate military brings them woes and tens or even hundreds of people including children, women and the elderly, most of them civilians.

Therefore, we are coming to put between your hands our project entertainment, which will serve a handful of Gaza’s children who have lost part of their families in the ongoing violence in the Gaza Strip and also sick children suffered from a psychological condition is difficult because of hearing the sound of explosions from missiles huge received Israeli warplanes in residential areas civilian in the Gaza Strip.

Aim of this project is to service the minds of these children to change the atmosphere in their minds that you do not know, but the atmosphere of war, we do not, we must make these minds are looking for the flag, freedom and stability, we go to you and hope your support for us to support these children with all our efforts and energy to provide all of their material and moral and draw a smile back on the faces of these children.

(Source /16.05.2013)

Turkish PM says Gaza visit set to take place in June and include West Bank

Erdoğan had previously said he intended to visit Gaza in April, before saying announcing that the trip would finally take place after his talks in the United States. AA photo

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said his visit to Gaza would probably take place in June and include the West Bank, during his joint press conference with U.S. President Barack Obama in the Rose Garden of the White House May 16. “I believe that my visit to Gaza will contribute much to the Palestine alliance and [regional] peace,” Erdoğan said, adding that it was out of the question for Turkey to show support just to one of the Palestinian groups. “I give much importance to contributing to Palestinian peace,” he said

Obama emphasized the importance of the normalization of Turkish-Israeli relations, saying it would contribute to advancing the two-state solution to the Middle East problem. Erdoğan said compensation negotiations between Turkey and Israel for the eight Turkish citizens and one Turkish-American dual citizen were continuing.

Erdoğan had previously said he intended to visit Gaza in April, before saying announcing that the trip would finally take place after his talks in the United States. Meanwhile Washington did not initially fully back the plan as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he asked Erdoğan to postpone his Gaza visit during a meeting on the sidelines of a Friends of Syria meeting in Istanbul last month.

(Source / 16.05.2013)

Video: At least 16 Palestinians arrested after Nakba clashes

Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian protestor as clashes broke out near Damascus gate in Jerusalem on May 15, 2013 during a rally to mark the 65th Nakba.

Protesters and Israel forces clashed in the West Bank on Wednesday as thousands of Palestinians commemorated the Nakba (catastrophe) of the Jewish state’s creation in 1948, during which 760,000 Palestinians fled their homes.

Soldiers fired rubber bullets at protesters gathered in front of Ofer military prison near Ramallah, wounding 15 of them, Palestinian medical officials said.

Demonstrators pelted soldiers with stones, the army said.

In east Jerusalem, police clashed with demonstrators outside the Old City’s Damascus Gate, police spokeswoman Luba Samri told AFP

Protesters threw stones at police, injuring three of them, she said. Security forces responded with stun grenades, water hoses and horses to disperse the demonstrators, she said.

A total of 16 Palestinians were arrested, Samri added.

Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to demonstrate on Nakba Day and assert their “right to return” to where their ancestors fled after the Israeli victory over Arab armies.

Protesters held aloft Palestinian flags and replicas of the keys to the houses their families abandoned in 1948.

Some 1,000 people turned out in the northern West Bank town of Nablus, and another 300 in southern Hebron.

Palestinians threw a petrol bomb at an army jeep near Hebron burning it out entirely and wounding four soldiers inside it, an army spokeswoman told AFP.

In Hamas-ruled Gaza, thousands of people gathered in the center of Gaza City, holding placards that read “We will get back to Palestinian villages and towns, no matter how long it takes” and “The right of return is sacred and inalienable”.

Earlier in the day, Gaza-based militants fired a projectile that hit an open field in southern Israel that struck in an open field, causing no damage or casualties, police said.

A military spokeswoman could not say whether the projectile was a mortar shell or rocket. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the incident.

Over the past two months, there has been an uptick in rocket fire on southern Israel after more than three months of complete quiet that followed a deadly confrontation in November that ended with an Egyptian-brokered truce.

In Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority is based, sirens sounded for 65 seconds, representing the 65 years of the existence of the modern state of Israel.

In a televised speech on Tuesday evening, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said “there is no country in the world, including the United States of America, that denies our right to establish our independent state based on the 1967 borders” — a reference to land occupied by Israel since the Six Day War.

“We are today a number (of people) and a truth that cannot be overlooked,” he said.

In 1948, more than 760,000 Palestinians — estimated today to number more than five million with their descendants — fled or were driven out of their homes.

Around 160,000 Palestinians stayed behind and are now known as Arab Israelis. They and their descendants number about 1.3 million people, or some 20 percent of the population.

(Source / 15.05.2013)

Forgotten Palestinian refugee community survives in Egypt

Palestinians who fled Palestine after war broke out in 1948 have been unable to return even after sixty-five years, and survive in a village with limited health, employment and educational opportunities.

Sixty-five years on from the Nakba, the Nile Delta’s Fadel Island, housing the largest community of 1948 refugees, struggles to survive and keep Palestine alive in Egypt
Palestinians who had fled Palestine after war broke out in 1948 had thought they would be in Egypt’s Nile Delta for just a few months, but have not been able to return even after sixty-five years, an Ahram Online report explains.

What began as a temporary asylum in an uninhabited piece of desert in Sharqiya is now known as “Gezira Fadel” or Fadel Island: a forgotten village housing the largest community of 1948 Palestinian refugees in Egypt.

Bedouin farmer Salman Salem, one of the oldest members of the community, describes how Fadel Island began as a couple of makeshift shelters “made from straw” after which people built small homes from mud. Now Fadel Island houses nearly 3,500 people.

Unlike Salem, village Mayor Mohamed El-Nahamawly was born in Fadel Island. His family was forced to abandon over 400 acres of land in Beersheba (which is now part of southern Israel) when they fled to Egypt during the Nakba (Palestinian exodus).

“People here do not call us Palestinians but rather Arabs,” El-Salmi Abu-Olan explains, estimating that there are 40,000 Palestinians in the Nile Delta governorate alone.

It takes three hours from Cairo to reach the small village, which is not written on any Egyptian map.

The rural Egyptian village lacks key facilities, the houses have straw roofs, the streets are narrow and unpaved.

“We do not have a sewage system yet,” the mayor bemoans, adding that the Fadel Island only got electricity in 1989.

Lack of access to education

Like many places in the region, reading and writing is a major issue in the village.

“The literacy rate increased from five years ago to reach 30 per cent, after the Palestinian Embassy in Egypt agreed to pay school fees as well the cost of school books for residents a couple of years ago,” says village resident Mohamed Nossair.

Unlike Egyptians, who have access to free public education, foreigners have to pay for their schooling.

However, according to the official Palestinian Embassy in Egypt website, the mission only covers school fees of 1,300 students across the whole of Sharqiya. Parents face difficulty in affording to spend all of their kids to school.

Responding to the growing problem, in 2010 the Palestinian Embassy funded a one-roomed school to fight illiteracy in the village.

The only teacher Mohamed Abdel-Hamid worries that the younger generations of refugees are becoming increasingly out of touch with their heritage.

He explains Palestinian students frequently miss out on textbooks because they have already been distributed among the Egyptian children.

“Of course university is an other issue because as a Palestinian you have to pay LE1500to popular faculties like medicine and agriculture,” continues Abu-Olan, who studied at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University. “The student may graduate from an Egyptian university but will not get a certificate until he pays the fees.”

Limited opportunity, difficult survival

Money is constant problem. Aside from farming, the village’s main source of revenue is recycling plastic.

Waste is brought to the village; the youth then remove the plastic casings in order to sell it. Many children work in this business: some of them manage to go school in the morning while others do not bother at all.

“We can’t find jobs anymore, this is why I want to travel and work in the Gulf,” says Walid Nossair, a 26-year-old resident who tried his luck as a carpenter and builder in order to support his wife and two children.

“However, although the Gulf States receive Palestinian migrant workers, it is now much harder for Palestinians to travel and work in the Gulf if they are coming from Egypt,” Nossair claims.

Palestinians disadvantaged

Rising youth unemployment is compounded by the inequality between Egyptians and Palestinians when it comes to the price of food, in particular bread, residents explain.

Starting this July, subsidised food will only be supplied to those who have Egyptian identification cards: something Palestinian refugees do not have.

“The Ministry of Health allocated nearly LE1 million to build a clinic here but they needed a plot to build the clinic on and we do not have the right to own the land,” Mayor El-Nahamawly explains, adding that the funds were then spent on another area.

“There is even a lot of red tape surrounding marriage. We have to travel to Cairo to get permission from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, then the Ministry of Justice after which we have to document the marriage at the capital’s notary office. The whole process costs a lot of money, why can’t we have a notary office for foreigners in Zagazig?” the mayor adds.

“We did not suffer from those problems in the past as we used to be treated the same as Egyptians,” Abu-Olan says making reference to life under former president Gamel Abdel-Nasser, when Palestinians were granted equal rights as Egyptians.

This changed in 1977 following political differences between the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and the then-president Anwar Sadat.  Sadat cancelled Nasser’s decrees and so Palestinians were consequently treated as foreigners.

The eternal problem separating Palestinian communities from other migrants in Egypt is lack of identification and proper travel papers.

The Palestinian-Egyptians have struggled to gain Egyptian citizenship for those with Egyptian mothers, until a protest finally resulted in a decree whereby Palestinian children of the Egyptian mothers were granted the Egyptian nationality.

Awareness

The problems Fadel Island faces drew the attention of Egyptian and Palestinian activists who sought to make public the plight of the forgotten village.

Consequently on Friday 17 May, three days after the international commemoration of Nakba Day, activists are organising a convoy of medical aid and supplies for the children from Cairo.

Sixty-five years on, village residents say they are fighting to preserve their traditions.

The older members of the community still dream of one day returning to their homeland. However the villagers are in limbo and that dream is fading.

The younger generation, who speak in perfect Egyptian accents, know little about where their great-grandfathers came from.

“As long as there is life there is hope,” concludes Mayor El-Nahamawly as he walks around his village, “Right now we are living our lives normally like Egyptians, pushing for key changes, but we still have hope.”

(Source / 15.05.2013)

Protests an “offensive” against settler attacks, West Bank villagers say

Villagers use bulldozers to clear a path to access agricultural land in Deir Jarir.

Climbing the hill outside of Deir Jarir, it was easy to mistake the bulldozer’s purpose. In a village surrounded by settlements and an Israeli military base, construction equipment can conjure images of forced displacement and land theft, as this equipment is so often used for these purposes in Palestine.

But today, the bulldozers were driven not by Israeli occupation forces, but by Deir Jarir residents. And they were put to very different ends.

The fifth weekly demonstration was held on 10 May in the hills between the villages of Deir Jarir and Silwad, roughly 12 kilometers northeast of Ramallah. Demonstrators explained that the bulldozers were clearing a path for vehicles to reach the olive groves, making it easier for farmers to access their fields. The path would also provide an escape route for people running from soldiers and settlers when they inevitably attack the next demonstration.

Demonstrator and Deir Jarir resident Ibrahim Bakar said the demonstrations are a form of peaceful resistance against the expansion of the nearby Ofra settlement and its decade-old satellite, Amona.

“We’re here to prove that this land is ours. And we’re here to protect it, that’s all. We’re not here to attack anybody,” he said. “This our land. It’s been our land for the last 2,000 years.”

Almost two months ago, settlers from Amona tried to establish a new outpost in the hills between Deir Jarir and Silwad. They completed construction on one building before local youths burned it down, sparking “price tag” attacks from settlers, who burned ten cars in Deir Jarir, destroyed dozens of olive trees, and beat a 60-year-old man unconscious as he worked his field (“Violent settler attack in Silwad,” Stop the Wall, 11 April).

“Offensive” move

Bakar said the unarmed demonstrations are an “offensive” move, a show of strength and solidarity to stop the settler attacks.

“They’ve been more aggressive recently, so we felt like if we don’t stop them, if we don’t do this, there’s more to come,” he said. “So the only way to stop them is to be on the offensive, you know? Simple as that.”

Eid Khalil, the vice-president of Deir Jarir’s local council, said the residents decided to start holding weekly protests when they realized the settlers were determined to expand.

“They [the demonstrations] started about the settlers. From 1967 to 1970, they started to build settlements between Silwad and Deir Jarir,” he said. “We were surprised [that in] the last three to four weeks, they [left] the settlement to build another settlement … to extend it. And this is very dangerous for us, and causes us trouble. That’s why we’re protesting against it.”

The Israeli government steals water from Silwad and Deir Jarir for the settlements.

Besides the land theft and “price tag” attacks, the Israeli government takes most of the water from Deir Jarir and Silwad and gives it to the settlements, Khalil said.

“The water is here is from our land. But how much water do we get every week? Two days a week, ok? It’s not enough for you even to have a small plant around the house, not in the field. Water is a big, big problem for us. If you compare it with the settlers, maybe we have five percent of what they use,” he said.

Members of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Israel and Palestine, some of whom are living in villages near Deir Jarir and Silwad, have been monitoring the ongoing land theft and settler attacks.

EAPPI member Norman Williams said before the occupation began in 1967, Deir Jarir and Silwad had 33,000 dunams (8,154 acres) of land, 60 percent of which has been stolen for the illegal settlements of Ofra and Amona. The villages are now left with only 12,000 dunams (2,965 acres).

“They’re being compressed into a smaller and smaller area with no compensation and complaints not being answered by the civil authority,” he said. “So from a human rights perspective, we see that as very disappointing and very, very sad.”

The Israeli government considers Ofra to be a “legal” settlement, while Amona is considered an “illegal outpost.” But under international law, all settlements are illegal. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states “The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

Land theft

According to Shawan Jabarin, director of the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq, Israeli support for the settlements constitutes a breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. He said the settlements are part of an Israeli policy of systematic land theft from Palestinians.

“The occupation, it’s a temporary presence. And by transferring civilians, you try to make it permanent. That’s the issue. The nature of that, it’s like a colonialist nature,” Jabarin said. “Here in [the] Palestinian case, settlements have affected every aspect of Palestinians’ lives. The destruction of their property, the confiscation of their land, the expanding of Israeli jurisdiction over the settlements … the legal characterization is, it’s illegalapartheid.”

Since Silwad and Deir Jarir share much of the same farmland, they have held two joint protests together in the last month. Bakar said both villages plan to continue the demonstrations every Friday for the foreseeable future.

“We’re all in the same boat, because there’s no borders … some parts are from Silwad, some parts are from Deir Jarir. So there’s no difference, I think. … We’re in this together. And we’re all working toward the same goal,” he said.

Muhammad, a demonstrator who asked that his full name not be used, said the demonstrations are necessary to stop settlement expansion. If the people of Silwad and Deir Jarir do nothing, he said, the settlements will eventually overtake the villages.

“They are expanding their borders every year,” he said. “And if we still do nothing, they are going to reach the village. You see? They are coming.”

(Source / 15.05.2013)

Abu Dhabi gives $10 mn for development in Palestine

Abu Dhabi, May 15 (IANS/WAM) The Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD) will provide a grant of 39.5 million dirhams (around $10 million) to the Al Noor Association for culture and development in Palestine.

The grant will help build a community centre that will provide educational services and hold cultural programmes, which will raise awareness in social, educational, health and cultural fields among the Palestinian people.

The ADFD involvement in Palestine goes back to 1999. The Fund has since then offered and managed three grants for projects in housing, education and social development sectors.

With this current grant, the total assistance provided to Palestine by ADFD on behalf of the Abu Dhabi government now amounts to more than 469 million dirhams (around $128 million).

(Source / 14.05.2013)

Breaking: We have purchased Gaza’s Ark

On the 65th commemoration of the Nakba, the struggle continues:

We have purchased Gaza’s Ark 

With your help, we will sail towards justice

When Palestinians and other people of conscience mark Nakba (Catastrophe) Day on May 15, they insist that the world acknowledge the history of Palestinian dispossession since 1948.  As world leaders have ignored Palestinian dispossession in general, they have also ignored the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza under the  Israeli blockade. Gaza’s Ark is a people-to-people campaign to force the injustices faced by Palestinians in Gaza back onto the world’s agenda.

We are excited to announce today that we have bought the boat that will become Gaza’s Ark! 

Your generous support has allowed us to reach this milestone. Your continued strong support will be crucial to our direct action campaign to challenge the blockade by sailing out from the port of Gaza withPalestinian exports for international markets.

We have made the down-payment to the boat’s previous owners but still have to pay the balance of the price, in addition to raising the funds required to rebuild and convert this fishing boat into a cargo vessel. With the help of donors like you we have raised over $90,000 to date (of an estimated campaign budget of about $US300,000).

Your continued support is the only way to ensure that the work will continue. Any amount is welcome, from $1 to $10,000 but if you can afford it, please be generous.

Since there are currently no cargo vessels in Gaza, we have purchased a fishing boat whose previous owners, like all fishers in Gaza, have difficulty making a living because of the violent restrictions imposed on Palestinian fishing boats by the Israeli government and we will convert it to a cargo vessel.

Much rebuilding is required and we are pleased that we will provide some work opportunities in Gaza where the illegal blockade has caused massive unemployment. Work on the boat will begin in a few days and it is critical that we have money in hand to ensure that the work will not be delayed, in the short term, due to lack of funds.  We also need to make the remaining boat payments to the seller on time.

We need you to be a part of this public challenge to the complicity of our governments with the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza.  The Palestinian port of Gaza must be open for marine traffic like every other Mediterranean port. We will not rest until that happens – please help us work towards that goal. The pace of our campaign’s progress depends on the generosity of supporters like you, and on your willingness to help us recruit other individuals and organizations.

Please visit our website, which features regular updates about the campaign and many ways to donate. There you will also find information about our Palestinian Trade not Aid initiative, and links to the ongoing Freedom Flotilla Coalition campaigns for Palestinian freedom of movement, including freedom of sailing for the Palestinian fishing fleet.

Please support Gaza’s Ark in any way you can, spread the word of the campaign to your contacts, friends and family. This will help the project progress as quickly as possible.

Together we can help end the blockade of Gaza!

Please donate generously http://www.gazaark.org/donate

(Source / 14.05.2013)

Rival Palestinian factions vow to form national unity government in 3 months

CAIRO –  A leading Palestinian official says rival groups Fatah and Hamas have agreed to form a national unity government in three months.

Fatah official Azzam al-Ahmed said both sides agreed on a timetable that begins with creating laws to govern elections.

Al-Ahmed spoke in Cairo after he met with a Hamas delegation led by Moussa Abu Marzouk. Tuesday’s meeting was brokered by Egyptian intelligence officials.

The Hamas militant group controls the Gaza Strip, while the Western-backed Palestinian Authority governs autonomous areas in the West Bank.

The territories have been politically divided since 2007.

In 2011, Hamas and Fatah leaders signed an Egyptian-brokered reconciliation agreement that was not implemented. According to subsequent talks, the two factions were to form a national coalition government of independents to oversee legislative and presidential elections.

(Source / 14.05.2013)

 

Palestinian liaison office secures release of 3 teens

 

NABLUS (Ma’an) — Palestinian Authority liaison officials on Monday secured the release of three teenagers detained by Israel, an official said. Director of the department, Mujahid Abu Dayya, told Ma’an that Israeli soldiers had detained Omran Ata Masimi, 15, Ibrahim Abdul-Karim Marshud, 15, and Muhammad Riyad Hashash, 14, at Huwwara checkpoint for allegedly carrying a knife. The liaison department exerted intensive efforts with their Israeli counterparts to release the teens, Abu Dayya added. (Source / 13.05.2013)