Israel Approves 650 Units In Pisgat Zeev Settlement

The Israeli “Regional Construction and Planning Committee” at the Jerusalem Municipality approved a plan to construct 650 units in Pisgat Zeev settlement that was built in 1985 on lands that belongs to Palestinian residents of Beit Hanina and Hizma, north of occupied Jerusalem.

Israel paving road to link East Jerusalem neighborhoods to city center

Akiva Eldar - Haaretz - Peace Now representatives argue that the "road`s current route isn`t legal, since the plan designates occupied territory for permanent infrastructures for the occupying power, while completely disregarding the needs of the Palestinian residents in Beit Hanina and the area."

Committee: Israel rabbi plans new construction at Western Wall

JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- A joint Muslim and Christian organization warned Thursday that the rabbi of the Western Wall plans to build a second level at the holy site abutting Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. The Islamic Christian Commission in Support of Jerusalem and the Holy Sites said the design was highly dangerous to the Haram al-Sharif compound as it would involve drilling directly under complex housing the mosque and the Dome of the Rock.

World bodies must act now to save Lifta, Antoine Raffoul 

Earlier this year, the group 1948 Lest We Forget filed an application to the World Monuments Fund (WMF) to include the Palestinian village of Lifta in its 2012 World Monuments Watch List. The WMF was chosen because it accepts nominations from individuals, institutions and organizations without the need for national or state endorsement. The fund is an independent organization registered as a charity and based in New York City. It is concerned with saving some of the world’s most treasured places, whether great buildings, sites or singular monuments. In preparing the application, we carried out extensive research on Lifta — its rich history, its unique architectural, cultural and social character — and found it to be an embodiment of everything Palestinian.

Israel 'shuts Allenby crossing to Jordan'

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) -- Israeli forces closed the West Bank's Allenby crossing to Jordan on Thursday evening, witnesses told Ma'an. The terminal, the sole entry and exit point for Palestinians in the West Bank to travel abroad, was shut down around 5 p.m. as ambulances, fire services, and Israeli police entered the closed zone, travelers said.  Crossings authorities could not be reached to comment on the unscheduled closure. 

Israel Prevents Thirty Farmers From Entering Their Lands

The Israeli Authorities prevented on Thursday thirty Palestinian farmers from Anin village, west of the northern West Bank city of Jenin, from entering their lands and orchards isolated behind the Annexation Wall in the area.

Israeli forces 'close Hebron farmland'

HEBRON (Ma’an) -- Israeli forces blocked a group of Palestinians from working on their land in southern Hebron on Thursday, farmers told Ma'an.  Ibrahim Abu Subha said around 30 farmers went to the fields near Susiya village, close to the southern edge of the West Bank, on Thursday morning. When they began work, Israeli forces arrived and ordered them off the land, declaring the 2,000 dunum area a closed military zone. Settlers from nearby Jewish-only communities inside the West Bank "incited forces against the Palestinians," when the group told soldiers they owned the fields, Abu Sabha said. 

Latin Church In Beit Jala Holds Prayers On Lands Threatened By Wall, Settlements

As part of the weekly nonviolent protests against the occupation, settlements, the Wall, and the illegal Israeli attempts to annex lands that belong to the Cremisan Christian Monastery In Beit Jala, Palestinian Christians held prayers on lands that belong to residents of the town, located near the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

Israeli academics condemn construction of Museum of Tolerance on Muslim cemetery

Israeli academics have condemned the construction of the so-called "Museum of Tolerance" on the site of a historic Muslim cemetery in Occupied Jerusalem. They have also warned that should the museum on top of the Ma'aman Allah Cemetery go ahead, Israel risks major and bitter confrontation with the Muslim world. The comments were made at a seminar organised by the Jerusalem Institute for Israeli Studies on Wednesday, November 30, to mark the publication of a book by Yitzhak Reiter about the Ma'aman Allah Cemetery and the construction of the museum in question. Speakers said that building the museum in such a location will have dangerous repercussions at local and international levels. They suggested that the decision to build should be reversed, especially in the light of the increasing international objections to the project.

‘This is how they drove us out’–Tiberias’s exiles recall the Nakba, Sam Kestenbaum

Zochrot is a Hebrew word which means “remembering.” It’s also the name of an Israeli NGO founded in 2002–during the Second Intifada–to collect stories and personal narrativesof the Palestinian Nakba, Arabic for "catastrophe," referring to the displacement and exodus of Historical Palestine’s Arab population in 1948. What Zochrot sought to do then was to preserve the Palestinian history of Israel, a history that for decades has been obscured and ignored. This is what they’ve been doing for the past nine years. The Nakba is ongoing, the group’s website reads, it wasn’t just the exodus and persecution of the Palestinian people following the creation of the state of Israel – the "catastrophe" is able to continue because most Jewish Israelis don’t know the pre-state, Palestinian, history of their land.

Nakba denial: ‘NYT’ removes the word ‘expulsion’ from article describing Palestinian refugees, Allison Deger

Correction: We have changed a sentence in this entry in response to reader comments.  The original sentence read "British troops left, thousands of Palestinian Arabs were expelled or fled and Arabs armies soon invaded Israel."  We have removed "were expelled and soon."