US President meets Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinians protest his visit to occupied lands

News Network
July 15, 2022

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Bethlehem, July 15: US President Joe Biden has met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, as hundreds of people staged a demonstration to express their outright rejection of his visit to the occupied territories on his first Middle East tour as the US president.

The talks between the two sides are expected to focus on economic measures, without striking any major diplomatic breakthrough.

Biden’s arrival in Bethlehem comes ahead of a visit to Saudi Arabia, where he will meet and hold talks with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and other high-profile officials.

Earlier, the US president visited the Augusta Victoria Hospital in the Israeli-occupied East al-Quds, where he announced a multi-million aid package for medical institutions in the area.

“Today I’m pleased to announce the United States is committing an additional $100 million to support these hospitals, your staffs that work for the Palestinian people,” he said.

Biden will also announce measures to upgrade telecoms networks in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to high speed 4G standards by the end of 2023, and other measures to ease travel between the West Bank and neighboring Jordan.

In addition, there will be a separate $201 million funding package provided through the UN relief agency UNRWA to help Palestinian refugees.

Former US president Donald Trump ended nearly all aid to Palestinians three years ago and fully sided with Israel’s positions in the decades-long dispute over a so-called two-state solution.

Palestinians have met Biden’s visit with skepticism, saying their concerns for self-determination and settlement building were ignored in favor of Israel’s regional stability with its Arab neighbors. 

Earlier this week, the secretary general of Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement said Joe Biden’s Middle East visit was aimed at promoting the normalization project and getting Saudi leaders to pump new crude supplies into the world oil market, adding that the US president had nothing to offer to the Palestinian people.

“Biden primarily came to persuade the Persian Gulf countries to produce and export more oil and gas,” Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech on the occasion of the outbreak of the 2006 war between Hezbollah and the Israeli regime.

Biden, Nasrallah said, is also in the region to ensure that the United States stands alongside Israel and its project of normalization with the Persian Gulf countries. “He has nothing to offer the Palestinian people.”

Palestinians protest

Meanwhile, dozens of Palestinian activists demonstrated outside the Augusta Victoria Hospital in East al-Quds, as Biden was visiting the medical facility.

The activists hoisted Palestinian flags and black banners, reminding the 79-year-old Palestinian president that the lives of the Palestinian people matter.

Palestinian sources, who asked not to be named, said a large number of Israeli forces were deployed outside the hospital.

Israeli troops later engaged in clashes with Palestinian protesters as they tried to disperse the crowd.

The demonstrators also demanded justice for slain Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed on May 11 during an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.

Last month, the United Nations human rights office said evidence suggested Israeli military fire had killed Abu Akleh while she stood with other reporters and was identifiable as a journalist.

To secure US interests, Israel's security

Separately, the leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement said Biden's visit to the region is meant to secure the interests of the United States as well as the security of the occupying Tel Aviv regime.

“We, as a Palestinian people and resistance front, must draw lessons and stop cherishing dreams about such a political development,” Ziyad al-Nakhalah said in an exclusive interview with the Arabic-language Palestine Today news agency.

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News Network
October 2,2024

Yemeni Armed Forces have launched a series of attacks on Israeli military positions deep inside the occupied territories, in solidarity with Palestinian and Lebanese people amid the Tel Aviv regime’s ongoing offensives in the Gaza Strip and across Lebanon.

Delivering a televised statement broadcast live from the capital Sana’a on Wednesday morning, Yemen’s military spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Saree said the country’s missile units had fired three domestically-developed Quds-5 cruise missiles at the strategic installations.

He added that the missiles managed to strike the designated targets precisely, despite the Zionist regime’s attempts to conceal the losses it sustained in the aftermath of the missile attack.

Saree also hailed the Islamic Republic of Iran’s retaliatory attack, dubbed Operation True Promise II, against Israel, stressing that Yemeni Armed Forces are prepared to participate in any joint military operation against the Zionist enemy in support of the Palestinian and Lebanese nations, and in response to Israeli atrocities.

“The continued US and British support for the Israeli enemy will put their interests in the region in jeopardy. Yemeni Armed Forces will not hesitate to expand their military operations against the Zionist enemy and its sponsors until the ongoing aggression against Gaza stops, the siege on the coastal territory is completely lifted, and the attacks on Lebanon come to an end,” he pointed out.

Yemenis have declared their open support for Palestine’s struggle against the Israeli occupation since the regime launched a devastating war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, after the territory’s Palestinian resistance movements carried out surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity.

The Yemeni Armed Forces have said they will not stop their attacks until unrelenting Israeli ground and aerial offensives in Gaza end.

So far, Israel has killed at least 41,638 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 96,460 others in Gaza.

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News Network
October 1,2024

The Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah says it targeted Israel's Glilot military base and Mossad headquarters in the outskirts of Tel Aviv with salvos of Fadi-4 rockets.

Israeli reports said several settlers were injured in the rocket barrage from Lebanon on Tel Aviv.

The reports said the rocket attack from Lebanon was “the largest” since the beginning of the war.

Hezbollah earlier said it struck gatherings of Israeli troopers in artillery and rocket attacks on the northern part of the occupied Palestinian territories in retaliation for Israel’s deadly strikes on Lebanon.

In separate statements released on Tuesday, the resistance movement said the gatherings of the enemy troops were hit at the Shtula, Metulla, Avivim and Rosh Pina settlements.

The resistance also targeted the Doviv barracks with a Falaq-2 rockets as well as the gathering of Israeli forces near the settlement of Rosh Pina with a rocket barrage.

The resistance group added that it had conducted the operations in support of “steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and … their valiant and honorable resistance, and in defense of Lebanon and its people.”

The attacks came amid a major escalation in Israel’s acts of terror and aggression in Lebanon that saw the regime assassinating Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in an airstrike on southern Beirut.

The death toll from Israeli aerial assaults across Lebanon since early October 2023 has reached 1,745 with some 8,767 injured, according to Lebanese government data. In response, Hezbollah has fired barrages of rockets and drones towards Israeli targets.

The deadly exchange of fire was sparked by Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, which has killed 41,615 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and wounded 96,359 others over the past year.

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News Network
September 29,2024

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Jerusalem, Oct 28: Israel said on Sunday it was carrying out new air raids against civilians and Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, after assassinating resistance group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Hezbollah confirmed on Saturday that its leader Nasrallah was assassinated in an Israeli strike a day earlier on Beirut’s southern suburbs, dealing a massive blow to the group he had led for decades.

Lebanon has declared three days of mourning for Hassan Nasrallah.

The development marks a sharp escalation in nearly a year of tit-for-tat cross-border fire between Hezbollah and Israel, and risks plunging the whole region into a wider war.

Israel continued to pound Lebanon on Sunday, with the ruthless military confirming it attacked dozens of targets in the territory of Lebanon in the last few hours.

The military has attacked hundreds of Hezbollah targets throughout Lebanon since Saturday, it said, as it seeks to disable the group’s military operations and infrastructure.

Israel has raised the prospect of a ground operation against Hezbollah, prompting widespread international concern.

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