Day: August 2, 2024

Israeli occupation forces arrested three citizens at dawn on Friday and confiscated one of their vehicles in Nablus. Security sources reported that a number of military jeeps stormed several neighborhoods east of the city, raided a number of homes, searched them, and wreaked havoc in them. They arrested Hamouda Al-Wazir from Jerusalem Street, Ahmed Hashash from the popular housing area, and Atallah Hashash from Iskanrojeeb, and confiscated his vehicle Source: Maan News Agency

National News Agency correspondent reported on Friday that the outskirts of the southern Lebanese town of Tair Harfa came under Israeli enemy artillery shelling. Source: National News Agency - Lebanon

The central national activities will begin tomorrow, Saturday, on the "National and International Day to Support Gaza and the Prisoners," which were announced by the prisoners' institutions, the national and Islamic forces, and all official and popular formations and frameworks. The Preparatory Committee for the National and International Day to Support Gaza and the Prisoners said that the idea for this day was initially conceived by the institutions working in the field of prisoners (the Prisoners and Freed Prisoners Affairs Authority, the Palestinian Prisoners Club, the Higher Authority for Monitoring Prisoners' Affairs, the national forces and the prisoners' families' committees, and a cadre of freed prisoners and those interested in the issue), in light of the ongoing genocide against our people in the Gaza Strip, and the new phase that detainees are experiencing in the prisons and camps of the Israeli occupation, who are being subjected to systematic crimes, unprecedented in their level and intensity. She added that this "requires every Palestinian to reconsider his role at the public and popular level in supporting his people and spreading awareness towards a collective responsibility that we seek to benefit from the current transformations to raise popular and international solidarity and establish the principle of the right to freedom and self-determination." Today will include widespread popular demonstrations in all Palestinian governorates, and will coincide with demonstrations in several countries around the world. The committee stressed that participation in this day is a national and moral duty, and an individual and collective responsibility. She said, "The war of extermination and comprehensive aggression against our people and our land are an extension of long decades of colonialism. Our struggle today and the victory for the blood of our martyrs and our prisoners in the occupation's prisons are an extension of our ongoing struggle against the Israeli colonial system and all the forces suppo rting it, and against the silence and helplessness that gave this system the green light to practice this level of crimes and brutality." In a paper on 'The Reality of Prisoners after October 7,' the Palestinian Prisoners Club said: 'The Israeli occupation has been continuing its war of genocide against our people in Gaza for 10 months, accompanied by a comprehensive aggression against all Palestinian geographies without exception. This stage constitutes a new milestone in the history of the occupation's crimes that have been ongoing for decades, and bears witness to the bloodiest period against our people since before the Palestinian Nakba in 1948, as the occupation has regained the level of its true criminality that it was practicing at a different pace despite the state of extension of everything we are witnessing today.' He added, "All the crimes we are witnessing today, which have reached their peak, and did not reach that stage even at the height of the two intifadas and popular uprisings, are fixed a nd systematic crimes. However, the basic variable in this war is the intensity of these crimes, which no longer have a ceiling or limits, and which aim only to erase the Palestinian existence in its most minute details, as an extension of the occupation's goal that has continued for many decades." He pointed out that "the issue of Palestinian prisoners has been one aspect of the war of extermination, as a result of the unprecedented level of crimes that we have monitored and documented over the past months. It also forms the basis for crimes that the occupation has committed against prisoners over many decades. It has carried out many attempts to encroach on what remains of the prisoners' rights, and the prisoners have remained throughout the past decades in a state of constant and continuous confrontation in order to preserve the minimum conditions of life in detention. They have fought many strikes and battles in which martyrs have risen." He explained that "the occupation worked to exploit the date of Oc tober 7th to practice its true brutal image, and practiced all forms and methods of crimes whose main goal was to kill and execute them. Dozens of prisoners and detainees in the occupation's prisons and camps have been martyred after this date, making the number of martyrs in this stage the highest historically since 1967." He pointed out that "the testimonies and statements from prisoners inside the occupation prisons that were transmitted by legal teams and the testimonies that were documented from those released, reflected a shocking and horrific level of systematic torture methods, specifically in the accounts of the detainees in Gaza. These testimonies included, in addition to the torture operations, methods of humiliation - unprecedented - to violate human dignity, severe and repeated beatings, and deprivation of the minimum necessary conditions of life in detention. Some crimes constituted war crimes, and we find that the occupation worked to institutionalize crimes with specific tools and methods, wh ich require the international human rights system to view them as a new stage that threatens all of humanity and not just the Palestinians, and this also applies to the issue of Palestinian prisoners and detainees." According to data from the prisoners' institutions, the Israeli occupation forces escalated their arrest campaigns after October 7, and the number of arrests reached more than (9,700) arrests in the West Bank alone, including all categories of Palestinian society, including more than (330) women and girls (as this statistic includes women who were arrested from the 1948 territories), and the number of arrests of children reached at least (670) cases, noting that the arrests include those who were arrested and the occupation kept them in detention, and those who were later released. The arrests included journalists and activists, as the number of arrests among journalists reached (90) cases of arrest, including (16) journalists from Gaza. The occupation kept (52) of them in detention, while relea sing the rest. As for the crime of administrative detention, which constituted the largest and most important difference in the increasing number of detainees in Israeli occupation prisons, the occupation issued more than (7500) administrative detention orders after October 7, between new orders and renewal orders. As for the number of arrests in Gaza, it is estimated in the thousands, and the occupation has admitted that it has arrested no less than 4,000 citizens from Gaza, in addition to thousands of workers, as well as citizens from Gaza who were in the West Bank for work, treatment, and residence. The total number of prisoners in Israeli occupation prisons is more than (9900), while the number of administrative detainees in occupation prisons is about (3380), and the number of those classified by the occupation authorities as (illegal combatants) is more than (1400). The number of martyrs of the prisoner movement since 1967 has risen to (257), including (20) prisoners who have been killed since the be ginning of the war of extermination, and whose identities have been announced, in addition to dozens of martyred detainees from Gaza, and the occupation continues to conceal their identities. Since October 7, Israel, the occupying power, has been waging a war on the Gaza Strip, leaving more than 130,000 dead and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that has claimed the lives of dozens of children. Israel continues the war, ignoring the UN Security Council resolutions calling for an immediate halt to it, and the International Court of Justice orders to take measures to prevent acts of genocide and improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza Source: Maan News Agency

10:00 am Metropolitan Elias Audi, the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Beirut and its dependencies, will lead the Divine Liturgy at St. George Cathedral, during which he will conduct a memorial service for the souls of the victims of the August 4 explosion who perished at St. George Hospital and in Beirut. 10:00 am Thanksgiving Mass for the beatification of Patriarch Estefan Douaihy, presided over by Maronite Patriarch Mar Bechara Boutros al-Rahi, at the Patriarchal Residence in Diman. 10:30 am Mass prayer for the repose of Elias Hanna Hasrouni, at Our Lady Church in Ain Ebel, organized by the Lebanese Forces Party, Ain Ebel Municipality, and the martyr's family and friends, commemorating the first anniversary of his martyrdom. 3:30 pm Loyalty to the Nation Gathering will lay a wreath on the tomb of the Beirut Fire Brigade martyrs and participate in a march starting at 4:00 pm from the Beirut Fire Brigade. 4:00 pm Two marches organized by the Association of Families of the Victims of the Beirut Port Explosion will head to the port under the banner "People Against Criminals, Continuing for Justice." One march will start from Martyrs' Square, and the other from the Fire Brigade Center in Karantina, converging at the Beirut Port at 5:30 pm. 4:00 pm A car march organized by the "Gathering of Families of the Martyrs, Injured, and Affected by the Beirut Port Explosion," will start from the entrance of Ghobeiry Municipality near the Airport Bridge, heading to the Palace of Justice, to make a statement and then proceed to Beirut Port Gate No. 3 for the central action, including laying a wreath on the memorial and reciting prayers for the souls of the martyrs and victims. 6:07 pm A national solidarity day organized by Aley Municipality and the organizers of the "Aley Summer Trade Fair 2024" in a national gesture in line with the sentiments of the Lebanese people and the families of the Beirut Port explosion victims. There will be a minute of silence at 6:07 pm, followed by national songs. Participants ' names will be signed on a board titled "Tribute to the Martyrs and Injured of the Beirut Port Explosion from the Residents of Aley," to be later handed over to the concerned committee. 7:30 pm Inauguration of the Church of Blessed Patriarch Estefan Douaihy in Ardeh, Zgharta District, presided over by Bishop Youssef Soueif. Source: National News Agency - Lebanon

Three citizens were injured at dawn on Friday when Israeli occupation forces stormed the city of Al-Bireh. Local sources reported that the occupation forces stormed the city of Al-Bireh with several vehicles, and were stationed in the neighborhoods of Saht Marhaba and Umm Al-Sharait, and deployed infantry squads and toured several areas in the two neighborhoods. Sources confirmed that three citizens were injured, one of them with a bullet in the foot, during the occupation forces' storming of the Umm Al-Sharait neighborhood in Al-Bireh Source: Maan News Agency

12:00 pm Solidarity meeting with the resistance in Palestine titled "Palestine: The Path is Resistance," organized by the Beirut Council of the Lebanese Popular Conference at the Tawfiq Tabara Center, Sanayeh, 10th floor. 4:00 pm Hezbollah leadership and the family of martyr Fouad Ali Shukr receive condolences for his martyrdom at the Sayyed al-Shuhada Complex in Rweiss, Southern Suburbs of Beirut, until 7:00 PM. 4:00 pm Unveiling of the founders of the Maronite Orders at St. Moura Church in Ehden, attended by Maronite Patriarch Mar Bechara Boutros al-Rahi and Papal Nuncio Paolo Borgia. 5:30 pm Solidarity stand for Gaza and support for the prisoners' cause in Miniyeh, organized by the Lebanese-Palestinian Coordination Committee for Prisoners and the Friends of Prisoner Yahya Skaf Committee, in front of the Skaf Prisoner Monument in Miniyeh. 6:00 pm Lecture by Dr. Joseph B. Majdalani (JBM) titled "Between Freedom and Restriction, Between Genius and Limitation, the Fate of Dua lity," presented by engineer Haifa Al Arab, organized by the Friends of White Knowledge Association - Esoteric Science, at the Esoteric Science Center in Beirut, Hazmieh Road, Hazmieh Commercial Center and Bank of Financial Credit Building, Block A, 1st floor (next to Abu Judeh Refrigerator and Spinneys). 6:30 pm Thanksgiving Mass for the beatification of Patriarch Estefan Douaihy at Ehdinayats Amphitheater in Ehden. 8:30 pm "Loyalty Stand" in front of the Martyrs' Monument in Ain Ebel, commemorating the first anniversary of the martyrdom of Elias Hanna Hasrouni, organized by the Lebanese Forces Party, Ain Ebel Municipality, and the martyr's family and friends. Source: National News Agency - Lebanon

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Friday that an Australian government review into the killing of aid workers from the World Central Kitchen organization concluded that the strikes by Israeli forces on their vehicles were the result of serious procedural failures. The minister added that her country will continue to press for full accountability, including any criminal charges. Israeli air strikes in April killed seven World Central Kitchen workers in Gaza, drawing widespread condemnation from the United States and a number of allies Source: Maan News Agency

The 'Islamic Resistance' announced on Friday in a statement, 'In support of our steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, and in support of their valiant and honorable resistance, our mujahideen targeted, at 01:15 pm on Friday, August 2, 2024, the Al-Samaqa site in the occupied Lebanese hills of Kfar Shuba, with missile weapons, and achieved direct hit." Source: National News Agency - Lebanon

A woman was killed and seven others were injured in a traffic accident east of Baqubah, Diyala Governorate Center. A security source told the correspondent of the National Iraqi News Agency / NINA / that a woman driving a car was killed and seven other people were injured, including children, when their vehicle overturned on the Baqubah - Kanaan road east of Baqubah. He added that the body of the victim and the injured were transferred to Baqubah Teaching Hospital. Meanwhile, the security services opened an investigation into the accident. Source: National Iraqi News Agency

Four Palestinians were killed and several others, including children and women, were injured this morning in an Israeli airstrike on a residential apartment in Khan Younis, located in the southern Gaza Strip. Local sources reported that the airstrike targeted an apartment belonging to the Barbakh family in central Khan Younis, killing four and injuring others. The injured individuals were transported to Nasser Medical Complex in the city for medical treatment. In another attack, two Palestinians were killed and others were injured when Israeli aircraft targeted a group of civilians east of the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza. Additionally, Israeli artillery shelled the Al-Sikka Street in the southeastern part of Gaza City. There were no immediate reports of casualties. The ongoing Israeli onslaught on Gaza since October 7, 2023, has so far resulted in 39,480 documented Palestinian fatalities, with an additional 91,128 others injured. Thousands of victims are also estimated to be buried under the rubb le. Source: National News Agency - Lebanon