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Israeli troops raid east al-Quds refugee camp UNRWA urges

Posted on: Tue February 09, 2010

OCCUPIED-AL-QUDS/CAIRO: Israeli security forces on Monday raided a Palestinian refugee camp in annexed east al-Quds, arresting dozens of peoples in an operation police said was aimed at putting some order in the area.    

Dozens of police and border police forces in jeeps entered the densely populated Shuafat camp in the north of occupied and annexed east al-Quds after midnight, witnesses and Israeli police said. Dozens of Palestinians were arrested on suspicion of tax evasion, debts to the municipality as well as involvement in criminal activities and violent disturbances, police spokesman Shmuel Ben Rubi said.    

 We want to put some order into this village, he told AFP, adding the operation would last as long as necessary. Local residents told AFP that the arrest raid also targeted Palestinian workers from the West Bank who live in the area without permits.    

Palestinian youths pelted police jeeps with rocks throughout the operation and clashes erupted in the afternoon as police dispersed the crowds with sound grenades and rubber bullets. East al-Quds Palestinians hold Israeli ID cards and are allowed to work in the country, while West Bank Palestinians require work permits from the state.    

Israel captured east al-Quds with the rest of the West Bank in the 1967 Six Day War and annexed it later in a move never recognised by the international community. Israel views the whole city as its eternal, indivisible capital while the Palestinians are determined to make the city s eastern part the capital of their promised state.

Meanwhile, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Filippo Grandi, on Monday urged Egypt and the Arab League to press Israel to allow reconstruction equipment into the blockaded Gaza Strip.    

 I am in Cairo to discuss the situation in Gaza and to call on the Cairo government and the Arab League to continue pressure on the state of Israel to lift entry restrictions on people and construction equipment, he told AFP.

Israel has imposed a tight blockade on the Gaza Strip since the Islamist movement Hamas ousted loyalists of President Mahmoud Abbas s secular Fatah party, taking control of the enclave in June 2007.

The Jewish state launched a 22-day genocidal war on Gaza that ended on January 18, 2009 and killed about 1,400 Palestinians. Thirteen Israelis also died during the offensive which devastated the already impoverished coastal enclave.

Israel refuses to let construction materials into Gaza for fear that Hamas would use it for military purposes.    

 We respect Israel s security concerns. They are legitimate concerns, but we have offered very precise guarantees that the material we receive would only be used for our reconstruction projects, Grandi said.    

Grandi, who was appointed commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestinian refugees on January 20, on Sunday met Arab League chief Amr Mussa and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit.    

Egypt is the current president of UNRWA s Advisory Commission, a committee grouping 23 countries tasked with assisting in the agency s work.    

According to Grandi, the situation in Gaza can only be described as a very serious crisis.  It s a crisis that affects all aspects of life for the residents of Gaza, he said.    

 It s an economic crisis with a crumbling private sector, it s a social crisis, a crisis of institutions, it s a very serious general crisis that the banning of construction material renders even more serious, he said. In a related development, Israel has banned a Palestinian cartographer specialised in Jewish settlement growth from travelling abroad for six months for security reasons, the Shin Bet internal intelligence service said on Monday.    

The ban applies to Khalil al-Tafakgi, a cartographer at the Arab Studies Society who served on the Palestinian negotiating team in the 1990s as a specialist in border and settlement issues.

Courtesy : The News