The United States backs Israel’s authorization of new construction projects in the West Bank, saying Washington’s Middle East ally has not violated its settlement moratorium.

Speaking about 112 new housing units in the West Bank settlement of Beitar Illit, US State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said the move did not amount to a breach of the moratorium that the Israelis previously announced.

“On the other hand, this is the kind of thing that both sides need to be cautious of as we move ahead with these parallel talks, Crowley told reporters in Washington on Monday.

Under international pressure and unprecedented criticism from the US, Israel in November unilaterally instituted a 10-month pause in settlement building in the West Bank.

The decision received a chilly welcome from the Palestinians as the freeze fails to give the Palestinian demand of a full, permanent halt for it does not stop the work on some 3,000 houses, nor does it include the ones in East Jerusalem Al-Quds.

The 10-month freeze also allows for construction of synagogues, schools and what Tel Aviv views as community projects.

Israel now has given a green light to the construction of some 112 new apartments in the West Bank settlement of Beitar Illit, citing safety considerations and saying the units were approved ahead of the moratorium.

While the US has announced Israel and the Palestinians have agreed to start indirect talks, Palestinian negotiators warn the Beitar Illit announcement will strain the fragile agreement and sabotage peace efforts.

Thousands of French protesters have rallied against the import of Israeli goods produced in Palestinian territories.

Monday’s demonstration comes less then a month after the European Union’s Court of Justice ruled that Israeli goods made in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank cannot be considered Israeli.

This means that those products cannot benefit from a trade deal giving Israel preferential access to EU markets.

The protesters, who came from all over France, symbolically gathered in the streets of the Mediterranean port of Sete — a hub for the biggest Israeli food exporter, Agrexco.

Over fifty percent of the company, selling over 300,000 tons of fresh fruits and vegetables to Europe, is owned by the Israeli regime.

“The EU and Israel have agreed that Israel will get preferential import taxes on one condition, the goods should not come from occupied territories. But we knows Agrexco grows its products in the occupied areas and is still benefiting from tax deductions,” Tannich Coupe Sud de France General Secretary said.

“This is a campaign of stigmatization. It’s not an illusion that the economy will be demolished, it’s the image of Israel that we are trying to attack,” Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan who also took part in the event told Press TV.

France is one of Israel’s top ten economic partners, a fact that has disappointed many of the French.

Israeli companies based around the illegal West Bank settlements manufacture a host of products including confectionery, wine, cosmetics and computer equipment.

Palestinians have long argued that since the settlements are not part of Israel, the goods made there should not receive trade privileges.

Pro-Palestinian campaigners have also regularly protested that European supermarkets stock goods with Israeli labels on farm products from the West Bank.

The Zionist occupation authority (ZOA) renewed on Friday the administrative detention of Khaled Al-Haj, one of Hamas’s spokesmen in the West Bank, only one day before his scheduled release.

Hamas sources in the Negev jail said that the ZOA renewed the administrative custody of Haj for three months for the ninth consecutive time.

Haj, commenting on the decision, said that it would not weaken his morale and would not deter him from supporting his people’s cause.

Haj, 45, has been held in ZOA custody for 38 months.

Zionist occupation forces launched at dawn on Thursday raids and searches for Palestinian homes in different parts of the West Bank and kidnapped more than (20) Palestinians.

The Zionist newspaper “Yediot Ahronot” said on its website that the Zionist army launched a dawn mass campaign of kidnappings in many cities in the West Bank and kidnapped 20 Palestinians, including 8 in the city of Al Khalil; the rest are from the city of Bethlehem and other cities.

The newspaper pointed out that the so-called “wanted” had been taken to the detention centers for interrogation.

The occupation forces launch almost daily campaigns of raids and inspection in the cities, villages and camps of the West Bank.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says a promising solution to the plight of Palestinian refugees lies in their moral and legal right to return to what was once Palestine.

Assad stated that granting the right of return is an inalienable, basic human right to each individual Palestinian refugee and they should be permitted to do so at the earliest practical date.

Right of return will alleviate the problems of Palestinians living in refugee communities scattered around the Middle East, he added.

The Syrian leader made the remarks during a meeting with Commissioner General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency Filippo Grandi in Damascus on Tuesday.

Grandi also called on Arab nations to throw their weight behind international efforts to lift the years-long siege of the Gaza Strip, and help end the suffering of some 1.5 million Palestinians living there.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were displaced from their homes during the Israeli-Arab wars in 1948 and 1967. They and their descendents live, many crammed into overcrowded enclaves, mainly in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon while some of them still retain old deeds and keys to homes now occupied by Israelis.

The Palestinians have been demanding the right to return to their homeland citing the United Nations General Assembly resolution 194, while Israelis are pushing for the refugees to be absorbed into their Arab host countries.

But most of the Arab nations have refused to do so, wishing neither to surrender to Israeli demands nor to upset the demographic balance of their own populations.

Israel’s prime minister has announced a plan to add two shrines located in the occupied West Bank to Israel’s list of “national heritage” sites.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced the Cave of the Patriarchs in al-Khalil and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem would be added to the list of around 150 sites that Israel plans to restore.

The Fatah party of acting Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas has denounced the decision as yet another setback to peace talks.

The Palestinian Authority has also warned that the decision would “wreck” peace efforts, BBC reported.

“We believe that this particular violation is very dangerous, because it might add to the religious nature of the conflict,” Ghassan Khatib, a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, told the Associated Press.

Israeli media have reported that Tel Aviv made the decision because of pressure from nationalist ministers.

Israel’s decision to add two West Bank locations to its national heritage sites lead to clashes between Palestinians and Israeli troops in the town of al-Khalil.

The clashes erupted after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a controversial plan to add two places in the occupied West Bank to Israel’s list of “national heritage” sites.

Israeli troops fired tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets to disperse dozens of youths who gathered in the city to protest the measure.

“We call on the international community to consider this decision illegal,” chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said.

“This Israeli decision is provocative for Muslims around the world and especially Palestinians,” he added.

Sheikh Taysir al-Tamimi, who heads Palestinian Islamic courts, said the decision “amounts to a declaration of war against the holy Islamic sites in Palestine.”

“The practices of the Israeli occupation and its actions against the holy sites violate divine laws and international ones,” he added in a statement.

A Hamas spokesman, Hammad Ar-Ruqab, has warned that the Tel Aviv regime will see a third uprising from the Palestinian people, should Israeli forces continue to displace Palestinians and Judaize the occupied Palestinian land in Jerusalem (Al-Quds).

“The crimes of Israeli occupation of the West Bank have become a threat to the whole Palestinian question, especially the campaign to Judaize the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem (Al-Quds),” Ar-Ruqab told hundreds of protestors who had taken to streets in Khan Younis on Tuesday to decry displacement of their fellow nationals in the West Bank.

The Hamas official also warned that the constant oppression would need only a small spark to ignite a third Intifada.

“We say to our people in the West Bank including Jerusalem (Al-Quds) that we are with them and will never remain, hands folded, toward their suffering. All the ongoing negotiations, and agreements signed by the Palestinian Authority do not represent the Palestinian people, and we will not be responsible for that, neither will the Palestinian people,” Ar-Ruqab noted.

The Hamas official called on the Palestinians in the West Bank and inside Israel to protect the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Ar-Ruqab said the responsibility to protect Al-Aqsa lies with the Palestinians, but must also be firmly supported by Arab and Muslim nations.

The First Intifada started in December 1987 when the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza started a mass uprising against the Israeli occupation. It was followed by the Second Intifada, also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada.

The Al-Aqsa Intifada began in September 2000, in response to then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The visit was seen by many as a provocative gesture aimed at inciting the Palestinians because the mosque is considered the third holiest site for Muslims.

Zionist occupation forces raided a number of houses in “Ithna” town west of Al Khalil city in the West Bank.

Palestinian sources reported that the Zionist forces raided a house belonging to Ahmed Sawayfa, and tempered with its contents.

It is noteworthy that this is the second intrusion in a row which is implemented by the occupation forces to Sawayfa house, to kidnap him.

The occupation forces and the Zionist intelligence had threatened last Sunday Sawayfa’s wife to arrest her and her four children if her husband did not surrender immediately.

The sources added that the Zionist occupation forces raided other homes belonging to two brothers from Rjoub family in “Al Kom” neighboring village, pointing out that the soldiers had searched the houses.

In another context, the Zionist occupation forces attacked farmers and pro-Palestinian activists during the process of growing lands threatened to be confiscated near the settlement of “Karmi Tsur” in the town of Beit Omar, north of Al Khalil.

According to local sources, the occupation forces attacked the farmers and international activists and fired tear gas canisters and stun grenades near the settlement of Karmi Tsur built on the lands of the towns of Halhoul and Beit Omar.

The farmers from the occupied Palestinian territories in 48 and the foreign activist planted about 500 olive trees on the threatened territory.

Hamas Movement has confirmed Sunday that its response to the Goldstone report didn’t contain any apology, stressing the Palestinians’ right to defend themselves and to resist the Zionist occupation.

Retorting to Fatah spokesmen in the West Bank, Hamas underlined that what Fatah spokesmen were talking about were Zionist hearsays meant to distort Hamas’s image.

“Those who asked Hamas to apologize to the Palestinian people instead of apologizing to the Zionists were indeed either liars or maliciously attempting to fish in muddy waters because their source of information was a false news report invented by the Hebrew media”, the Movement underlined in a statement it issued Sunday.

To the contrary, Hamas said, the Zionist crimes against the Palestinian people don’t need to be proven as media outlets were showing those crimes such as the ZOF troops deliberate targeting of Palestinian civilians, paramedics and ambulances live on TV during the war on Gaza.

Hamas explained that it only responded to claims included in the Goldstone report, and proved that the Palestinian resistance’s behavior was a reaction to the Zionist brutal aggression on the Strip.

For his part, Mohammed Faraj Al-Ghoul, the Palestinian justice minister, raised doubts over Zionist claims that Palestinian rockets killed civilians, yet, he added, the Zionist occupation has to prove those claims with evidence but till now it refuses to allow independent committees to check those claims.

Ghoul asserted the right of the Palestinian resistance to defend the Palestinian people and to repel any Zionist aggression against them with all possible means.

He also pointed out that the PA government in Gaza would follow up the matter till the UN refers the report to the International Criminal Court to prosecute the Zionist war criminals.

The Zionist occupation forces kidnapped early on Monday, 6 citizens in the occupied West Bank claiming they were “wanted”.

Zionist Radio reported that three of the detainees are from the villages of Orta and North Asira, Nablus district, while three others are from the villages of Beit Daqo and Bado, district of Ramallah.

In the same context, the Zionist occupation forces kidnapped on Sunday, 31/1/2010, four Palestinians at a military checkpoint in the Jordan Valley, north of the occupied West Bank.

A spokesman for the Zionist radio said that four Palestinians were arrested at the military checkpoint ‘Bkaaot’, and the soldiers detonated the claimed explosives seized without causing any injuries.

The Zionist forces transferred the detainees to interrogation centers for investigation without disclosing any details about their identities.

The Zionist occupation forces kidnapped five Palestinians from Burqa town in the northern of West Bank during early morning raids Wednesday.

Eye witnesses said that several Zionist military vehicles stormed the village at midnight, kidnapped five young men after searching their homes.

The captured men were identified as 18-year-old Muhannad Seif, 17-year-old Yafi’ Suheil, 17-year-old Ashraf Hajja, 15-year-old Walid Daghlas, and 16-year-old Fadi Abu Omar.

Zionist occupation forces detained two citizens in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday morning. Palestinian local sources reported that the Zionist occupation forces launched a campaign of raids and arrests among the citizens.

The Zionist Forces detained two citizens in the city of Ramallah in the West Bank, and that they were taken to unknown destinations.

It should be mention that the Zionist occupation forces launching daily arrest campaigns against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, at the time of Mahmoud Abbas militia arrests in the West Bank.

Abbas militia executed arrest campaigns among the Hamas men these days, where they subjected to harsh interrogation tactics.

Militiamen of Nablus detained 9 of Fatah members as a response to the Zionist request.

Benjamin Netanyahu pledged that the Zionist entity would keep parts of the West Bank forever, planting trees in a settlement bloc to reaffirm a land claim long rooted in Zionist government policy.

“Our message is clear: We are planting here, we will stay here, we will build here, this place will be an inseparable part of the State of Israel for eternity,” Netanyahu said in the Gush Etzion enclave.

Speaking after meeting US President Barack Obama’s Middle East envoy in Jerusalem, Netanyahu vowed the Zionist entity would also keep its two biggest West Bank settlements, Maale Adumim and Ariel.

His comments came as no surprise to the Palestinians, who are familiar with such Zionist statements by the Zionist leaders who do not believe in peace.

Mr. Mitchell told Palestinian leaders on Friday they must resume talks with the Zionist entity if they want US help to achieve a peace treaty that creates a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Abbas Authority refuses to talk with the Zionist entity until it stops all settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas it captured in a 1967 war.

The World Court has ruled that Zionist settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are illegal. Many Zionist settlers claim a God-given right to the West Bank.

This week, the Zionist forces injured 15 Palestinians throughout the West Bank, compared to 21 injuries last week and slightly below the 2009 weekly average of 17 Palestinian injuries.

Eight of this week’s injuries, including the injury of two boys, occurred during the weekly anti‐Barrier protests held in Bil’in village and a protest against the expansion of “Hallamish” settlement in the Ramallah area.

Another three Palestinians sustained injuries when shot by Zionist forces in two separate incidents, including a confrontation in Al Jalazun Refugee Camp (Ramallah) between stone-throwing Palestinians and Zionist forces and an incident involving farmers and internationals planting trees in the Al Rish Valley, an area previously declared closed by the military.

The remaining four Palestinians were wounded when physically assaulted by Zionist forces in a raid on Al Arroub Refugee Camp in Al Khalil governorate, while trying to access the Zionist entity without a permit and while working the land in the vicinity of the Beitar Ilit settlement in the Bethlehem governorate.

Zionist forces conducted 100 search operations inside Palestinian villages, the majority of which took place in the northern West Bank, slightly below the weekly average during 2009.

Also this week, in an arrest operation carried out in Al Khalil City, Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces clashed with family members of a suspected member of the armed wing of Hamas, in an incident involving extensive exchanges of fire; five family members, excluding the suspect, were arrested.

Palestinian Human Rights Center said that nine Palestinians were wounded in the West Bank; including two children, pointing out that among the injured, three photojournalists; injured in Bil’in weekly march west of Ramallah.

In the weekly report on violations of Zionism in the Palestinian territories, the center said: “The occupation forces carried out during the past week, 22 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank and arrested 24 Palestinians;, including four children.”

The report emphasized that the occupation forces are continuing to storm the houses of activists against the wall; to arrest them or restricting them.

The Center’s report pointed out that the Zionist entity is still Judaizing East Jerusalem and building settlements, and that the settlers are continuing attacks in the West Bank, adding that “the occupation forces continue to isolate the Gaza Strip from the outside world, and tightening the siege on the West Bank”.

The report also pointed out that the occupation forced a citizen to the demolish his house, as well as the occurrence of landslides in Silwan town because of the Zionist excavations.

The occupation forces demolished a house north-east of Jerusalem, while the settlers had cut 70 trees in Al Khalil city and burnt fire in two cars and tractor.

Zionist media reported that nine Palestinians were detained during overnight raids in the occupied West Bank. Palestinian local resources confirmed that the Zionist forces detained two citizens in raids on Nablus.

Palestinian local sources said that several Zionist vehicles raided Nablus from the Huwwara military checkpoint, entered several neighborhoods and detained Asid Al-Juneid from the Kamal Jenblat area, and Khalil Abdul Aziz Jebrin from Rafedia.

Zionist Channel 10 News claimed that the nine were “wanted,” and the detainees were as the follow: two Nablus, two from Ramallah, and five from Bethlehem. They were all taken for unknown destination.

Zionist occupation forces launched at dawn on Monday January 18th, 2010, a raid and search campaign in different areas in the West Bank, the forces detained more than seventeen Palestinians.

The Zionist newspaper “Yedioth Ahronoth” on its website said that the Zionist military vehicles stormed several villages and cities in the West Bank, and arrested more than 17 citizens that what they called the “Wanted” and most of them near Ramallah.

Palestinian sources told our correspondent that the Zionist army stormed at dawn today Ni’lin west of Ramallah and detained four Palestinians after a raid on more than fifteen houses and tampering with its contents.

According to those sources, the detainees are: Muntaseer A-Khawaja, 22 years, Mohamed Essam Al-Khawaja, 22 years, and the brothers Ehab & Sheha Mohammed Al-Khawaja. The sources added that the Palestinian detainees were taken to an unknown location.

The occupation forces have launched almost daily raids and search campaigns for cities, villages and camps in the West Bank and it claims that it detained Palestinian militants.

Palestinian security agents have been torturing supporters of the Hamas movement in their custody in the West Bank in cooperation with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), a report says.

Some western diplomats, together with regional officials, say that the relationship between the CIA and the two Palestinian agencies involved – Preventive Security Organization (PSO) and General Intelligence Service (GI) – is so close that the American agency appears to be supervising the Palestinians’ work, according to a report published in The Guardian newspaper.

“The [Central Intelligence] Agency considers them as their property, those two Palestinian services,” one senior western official said. A diplomatic source added that US influence over the agencies was so great they could be considered “an advanced arm of the war on terror.”

Details of the cooperation between the CIA and Palestinian security agents comes to light as continuing use of torture, as well as abusive interrogations, in the occupied West bank has been widely documented by human rights groups, the report added.

Most of those held without trial and allegedly tortured in the West Bank have been supporters of Hamas, which won a large majority in the Palestinian parliament in January 2006, it went on to note.

The most common mistreatment, according to the report, is that detainees are severely beaten and subjected to a torture known as ’shabeh’, during which they are shackled and forced to assume painful positions for long periods.

There have also been reports of sleep deprivation, and of large numbers of detainees being crammed into small cells to prevent rest.

Almost all the detainees enter a system of military justice under which they need not be brought before a court for six months. This flagrantly violates the prisoners’ rights since their cases should, in actual fact, be brought before civilian courts.

According to Palestinian Authority officials, between 400 and 500 Hamas supporters are currently held by the PSO and GI.

The Central Council of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) has extended the tenure of Mahmoud Abbas as acting chief of the Palestinian Authority until new elections are held.

The vote endorsed Abbas’ earlier decision to call off the January 24 presidential and legislative elections due to the boycott of the vote in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas movement.

Parliament’s mandate was extended too at the PLO meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Abbas, whose term ends on January 25, says it is impossible to hold the elections due to Hamas’ refusal to allow voting in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas, which controls the coastal enclave, disputes Abbas’ legitimacy and says the extension is unconstitutional.

The Central Council also endorsed Abbas’ refusal to return to negotiations with Israel until the regime stops the construction of Jewish settlements in the occupied lands.

“We will not go to negotiations until Israel fully halts settlement activities and agrees to a term of reference for such negotiations,” said PLO Central Council member Tawfiq al-Tirawi.

Abbas’ failure to mend fences with the rival Hamas movement or win concessions from Tel Aviv’s hard-line regime has impaired his reputation among scores of Palestinians.

Ever since Hamas won an outright majority in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, the two factions have pursued bitter rivalry featuring sporadic fighting and tit-for-tat arrests.

Since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip from the Fatah faction in the summer of 2007, the coastal enclave has been under an economic siege laid by the US, Israel and the EU.

Since then, Hamas has governed the Gaza Strip, while Fatah has continued to control the West Bank from Ramallah.

Israel and Egypt, with the Palestinian Authority’s blessings, have both sealed their borders with the Gaza Strip, effectively cutting off the coastal enclave from the rest of the world.

The Western-backed embattled Palestinian leader has frequently threatened to resign over the paralysis of peace negotiations with Israel, despite the fact that he has at the same time suggested to remain in office.