Palestine

03 June 2021; MEMO: An Egyptian delegation made up of engineers and technicians were due to enter the besieged Gaza Strip yesterday to assess the extent of damage caused by the recent Israeli aggression as part of reconstruction efforts, Quds Press reported.

03 June 2021; MEMO: The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture in Gaza said on Wednesday that the total losses suffered by the sector as a result of the recent Israeli military offensive are estimated at $204 million, Anadolu has reported. Farmers, said the ministry, were forcibly displaced by Israel's indiscriminate bombing which prevented them from reaching and working on their land.

03 June 2021; MEMO: Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah "live in constant fear of being forcibly displaced… and are traumatised by settler violence", Commissioner-General of UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said yesterday.

He made the remarks during a visit to eight Palestine refugee families at the centre of the dispossession campaign by Israeli settler organisations in the occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

03 June 2021; MEMO: A 12-year-old Palestinian child was run over by Israeli police in East Jerusalem's Silwan neighborhood for placing the Palestinian flag on his bicycle while riding to a nearby grocery to buy bread, Anadolu reports.

"I was on my bike to buy bread when three Israeli policemen chased me because I put the [Palestinian] flag on the bike," Jawad al-Abbasi said in a report he provided to the Hadassah Hospital where he has been receiving treatment.

02 June 2021; MEMO: The head of the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, Archbishop Atallah Hanna, said on Tuesday that the Israeli plans to expel Palestinian families from their homes in the city's Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood will not succeed, Al-Watan Voice has reported.

02 June 2021; MEMO: Israeli ministers laid the foundation stone on Tuesday for 350 new housing units in the Beit El settlement near the city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. All of Israel's settlements are illegal under international law.

GAZA, Jun 2 (NNN-WAFA) – A senior European Union (EU) official, yesterday, called on Israel to end the blockade, which has been imposed on the Gaza Strip for 15 years, to facilitate the process of reconstruction in the coastal enclave.

EU Representative to Palestine, Sven Kuehn von Burgsdorff, told a news conference in Gaza that, the reconstruction plan in the Gaza Strip “needs to lift the blockade, to enable the populations to move freely and have a free trade.”

01 June 2021; MEMO: Deputy Chief of Hamas Abroad, Mousa Abu Marzouq, yesterday rejected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's linking of the Gaza reconstruction file with a potential prisoner swap.

Taking to Twitter, Abu Marzouq wrote: "Netanyahu is linking the reconstruction of Gaza to the file of his missing soldiers. This is totally unacceptable and violates international law."

01 June 2021; MEMO: Israel's occupation authorities issued demolition orders on Monday for ten Palestinian houses in the villages of Ni'lin and Deir Qaddis, west of the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, Wafa news agency has reported. According to a local Palestinian official, the owners of the homes have legal building permits issued by the Palestinian Authority.

The head of Egyptian intelligence, Abbas Kamel, and his accompanying delegation arrived in the Gaza Strip yesterday afternoon to hold talks on the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel.

Entering through the Beit Hanoun (Erez) checkpoint in the northern Gaza Strip, the delegation was received by the head of the Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, and the movement's leadership.

This is Kamel's first visit to Gaza since he took office in 2018.