Palestine Today 101308

Monday October 13, 2008 18:31 by IMEMC News - Audio Dept

Click on Link to download or play MP3 file || 3 m 30s || 3.20 MB ||

Palestine Today 101308 Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org for Monday October, 13 2008 The ruling Hamas party in Gaza confirmed on Monday that its position regarding a prisoner swap with Israel will remain unchanged, meanwhile, Israeli military detentions of Palestinian residents in the West Bank continued. These stories and more is coming up, stay tuned. Hamas's spokesman in Gaza, Ayman Taha, confirmed on Monday that his party's position regarding a possible prisoner swap in exchange for the captured Israeli soldier, Gil'ad Shalit will remain unchanged. Taha said that the party's demands regarding names of Palestinian prisoners, to be swapped for Shalit, will never change, saying that the ball is still in Israel's court. One month ago, Israel prepared a list of its own, and so far no concrete progress has been maintained, pending Egyptian mediation efforts. Hamas captured Shalit in a cross-border attack in southern Gaza in June 2006, and since then Israel has failed to get its soldier released, despite several months of Egyptian-mediated talks, as well as previous massive Israeli offensives against the Gaza Strip. In the West Bank, the Israeli military continued on Monday detention campaigns against Palestinian residents, rounding up five residents from the city of Hebron. An Israeli military court, meanwhile, extended the detention time of two residents and sentenced a third from the Jenin city. In other news, the outgoing Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, admitted that Palestinian residents of Israel are discriminated against in the state of Israel. Olmert's statement came during a meeting with representatives of the Arab community in Israel, following clashes between Jewish and Arab residents of the Israeli-Arab city of Akka. At the internal Palestinian level, the exiled chief of the politburo of Hamas, Kahled Mash’al, said in Qatar that the intra-Palestinian dialogue underway in Cairo requires a reciprocal step of halting political arrests in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, outlawed Hamas before the latter wrestled control over Gaza in June 2007. Since then, the Hamas government in Gaza and the Fatah-loyal government in the West Bank have been trading arrests of each other members and supporters in both ends of Palestine. Meanwhile, President Abbas has been holding a series of meetings with concerned Arab parties such the Egyptians and Syrians, in order to ensure success of the Cairo dialogue for national unity. 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. This report has been brought to you by Rami Al-Meghari, and George Rishmawi.

palestine | english audio report | audio report news at imemc dot org