Palestine Today 073007

Monday July 30, 2007 17:21 by Ghassan Bannoura - IMEMC - Audio dept.

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Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Centre, www.imemc.org, for Monday July, 30th, 2007.

Israeli army plane attacks a car in Gaza and Palestinian employees take the government to court, these stories and more coming up stay tuned.

The Gaza strip

An Israeli spy plane fired several missiles at a Palestinian car driving on the main highway in Gaza City on Monday in mid-day. Medical sources reported a number of injuries. Sources close to Islamic Jihad said that the car belongs to resistance fighters from the movement.

Witnesses said that three young Palestinian men were driving their car on the highway when an unmanned Israeli plane fired several missiles at the car, totally destroying the car and injuring the passengers.

The three fighters managed to escape the attack from the missile because it hit the front of the car, allowing a window of a few seconds that permitted the fighters to escape.

The West Bank

A massive Israeli force invaded the town of Beit Omer located north of Hebron city in the southern part of the West Bank and kidnapped three civilians form the town on Monday. Troops searched homes and ransacked them. Then they took four civilians to unknown locations.

In other news, The Palestinian governmental employees union decided on Monday to take the Palestinian government and Palestinian banks to court because of government failure to deliver the employees' salaries according to the agreed-upon timetable. In addition, the court action was prompted by the government decision of not allowing banks to channel funds from donor countries to go through the banks to get to employees.

Majd Abu Raed, the director of the employees union, said that due to the delay in delivering the salaries, the percentage of interest which employees owe to the banks, due to survival loans, was doubled. That figure is reaching 50 percent of the employees' salaries, leaving 65,000 governmental employees unable to pay their debts that accumulated to the banks during the past one and a half years.

The Palestinian Authority was unable to pay its employees their salaries since the beginning of 2006 due to the economic embargo that was led by the United States of America when Hamas took office after that year's democratic election. Abu Raed said that the union is waiting to receive the overdue salaries for employees to be fully covered by the government in the beginning of August.

Conclusion

Thank you for joining us from occupied Bethlehem. You have been listening to Palestine Today from the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, brought to you by Bill Mcgrath and Ghassan Bannoura.

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