Overplaying Its Hand, Israel Still Holds Plenty of US Cards
Hamas police beat, arrest protesters at Gaza rally
Police in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip beat and arrested protesters on Wednesday at a youth rally in the north of the besieged coastal territory, an AFP correspondent said.
More than 400 demonstrators gathered in Shujaiyeh, a neighborhood in eastern Gaza City that was razed during a July-August war between Hamas and Israel, urging reconstruction and calling for an end to intra-Palestinian division.
Plainclothes police officers entered the crowd, beating a number of protesters without causing serious injury, the AFP correspondent said.
They then arrested at least seven people, according to witnesses.
The Hamas-run interior ministry said in a statement that the crowd had grown violent, forcing police to intervene "to protect the lives of those participating, after which calm prevailed".
Prisoners committee chief slams PA over unpaid electricity bill
The Palestinian electricity company has disconnected the grid to the building of the Prisoners and Former Prisoners' Affairs Committee because of unpaid bills the PA Ministry of Finance is responsible for, the committee chief said.
Speaking to Ma'an on Wednesday, Issa Qaraqe slammed the Palestinian consensus government over the "miserable" policy toward the prisoners' committee.
Abu Madi revealed that the number of security apparatus members in the Gaza Strip amounts to 18,000 including the police, the security and protection units, the internal security forces and the national security agency, as well as other security departments. These 18,000 individuals have not received their salaries since the consensus government was established in June 2014. He described the security situation in the Gaza Strip as completely stable and noted that the occasional security breaches come in the natural context of every society.
Prices on basic commodities in the West Bank rose dramatically with the start of Ramadan in mid-June. The price of beef rose approximately 10 percent, chicken 20 percent and vegetables 25 percent, challenging Palestinian families already struggling to make ends meet.
Palestinian Authority security forces detained over 100 Hamas affiliates in the West Bank overnight Thursday, an official from the Hamas movement said Friday.
The Palestinian Authority on Saturday defended its arrest of dozens of Hamas members across the occupied West Bank, claiming they had been carried out for "security reasons."
Adnan Dmeiri, spokesman for the PA security services, accused Hamas of plotting to create instability in the West Bank and told Ma'an the arrests would continue "as long as there is a threat to the security of our homeland."
Israeli army and PA detain 6 Palestinians 'behind' West Bank shooting
The Israeli army and Palestinian security forces have detained six Palestinian "Hamas operatives" responsible for a shooting in the occupied West Bank last month that left one Israeli settler dead and three injured, the Israeli army said in a statement Sunday.
The statement identified the alleged shooter as Mehad Hamad, a 26-year-old resident of Silwad northeast of Ramallah.
It claimed that he and the other five had "confessed" to carrying out the attacks, although it later added that the investigation only "suggest(ed)" he had personally committed the shootings.
Four Israeli settlers were injured in the attack on June 29 near the illegal settlement of Shvut Rachel south of Nablus, with one of them, Moshe Malachi Rosenfeld, later succumbing to his wounds.
Palestinian female labor participation among world's lowest
The number of Palestinian women in the labor force remains among the lowest in the world despite an increase during the past decade, a Palestinian research organization reported Wednesday.
The female labor participation rate in the occupied Palestinian territories in 2014 was only 19.4 percent, compared to 25 percent in the rest of the Arab world, a policy brief by Al-Shabaka said, adding that the global average stands at 51 percent.
The low rates come despite high education rates among Palestinian women, Al-Shabaka policy adviser Samia al-Botmeh notes in her report, adding that Palestinian women have higher primary and secondary enrollment levels than males in the entire Middle East and North Africa.