Eight Palestinians were injured from attacks by Israeli forces who were delivering house demolition orders in the Al-Bustan neighborhood in East Jerusalem on Wednesday.

A Palestinian resident of Al-Bustan with the demolition order hours after the Israeli police destroyed his house – Photo by Katherine Orwell

The Israeli police had come to the area to hand out five new demolition orders, on top of the 90 already existing demolition orders.

Residents that wanted to confront the Israeli police were dispersed with the use of tear gas.The police also seized the ID card of a member of the Al-Bustan Committee, a popular organization that aims to peacefully oppose the house demolitions in the area.

The Al-Bustan neighborhood is part of the Silwan area, close to the Old City of Jerusalem. The Israeli authorities want to demolish the neighborhood to make way for a controversial park. Israel has been doing archeological excavations in the area to prove that the ancient city of David once stood there. Palestinians feel that the motivations behind this are political and that it is part of the covert strategy to transfer all Palestinians out of Jerusalem.

Israeli authorities state the houses were built without building permits. Building permits are rarely issued to Palestinians and some of the structures were built before Israel came to occupy and annex East-Jerusalem in 1967.

Hundreds of Jews from North America are immigrating to Israel this summer, arriving on special charter flights. They are getting a warm welcome.
A group of 238 Jews from the United States and Canada left the comforts of home for a new life in the State of Israel.
While about a million Jews have immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union, only a few have been willing to leave behind the affluence of America and Europe. But an organization called Nefesh to Nefesh or Soul to Soul is trying to change that. The organization, which is funded by Jews and Evangelical Christians, plans to bring nearly 4,000 Jews from the U.S., Canada and Britain by the end of the year.
In this group, some 55 young men and women will soon be serving in the Israeli army.
Israel also sees “aliyah” or immigration as a way to counter the demographic threat posed by a higher birthrate among Israeli Arabs and Palestinians. Netanyahu noted that for the first time in 2,000 years, there will soon be more Jews in Israel than in the Diaspora.

LONDON: Afghanistan’s August 20 presidential election could go to a second round after a campaign that has been more competitive than expected, Britain’s ambassador in Kabul said on Wednesday.
President Hamid Karzai is viewed as favourite to win re-election, but Ambassador Mark Sedwill made clear he had doubts over whether any candidate could achieve the 50 percent of the vote needed to win in the first round.
“I think it’s genuinely in the balance as to whether there will be a second round,” Sedwill said in a news conference by video link from Kabul.
A shortage of polling or canvassing data made it hard to tell how candidates were doing, he said.
Karzai faces 36 challengers with former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah and ex-finance minister Ashraf Ghani among few serious contenders. If a second round is needed, it will be held in early October.
Sedwill said several of the candidates had run very energetic campaigns.
“The competitiveness of the campaign has taken many of us here by surprise,” he said, noting there had been televised debates between candidates and huge election rallies.
Between 15 and 17 million Afghans are registered to vote, British officials say.
Election experts believed the Afghan poll was being held in “probably the most challenging circumstances for elections that they have ever encountered”, Sedwill said.
Taliban insurgents have vowed to disrupt the election and have called on Afghans to boycott the ballot.
Violence across Afghanistan this year has reached its worst levels since U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban in 2001 and escalated further after U.S. and British troops launched offensives in southern Helmand over the past two months.
The south is Karzai’s traditional powerbase and if turnout there is depressed by violence it could hurt his vote.
An Afghan government map obtained by Reuters on Wednesday showed almost half the country at high risk of attack by insurgents or under “enemy control”.
Apart from security problems, Afghanistan is among the poorest countries in the world and two thirds of the population are illiterate, Sedwill said.
“We have to recognise … that these elections are therefore going to be pretty rough and ready in places. They won’t be perfect,” he said.
The test of success would be whether they were credible, secure and inclusive enough, said Sedwill.
On polling day, community defence groups and Afghan security forces will provide security at polling stations, with international forces taking a relatively low profile, he said.