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Sisi meets Abbas on Egypt’s support to Palestinian people

The latest skirmishes broke out amid fears Tel Aviv was planning to revise the visitation status quo at the Temple Mount, which houses the Al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest site.

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Egypt has announced that its army had destroyed 31 tunnels connecting the besieged Gaza Strip and Egypt last month, an army spokesman has said. “The forces then responded”, including with live fire, the statement said. Israeli security forces used live bullets and tear gas against Palestinian youths who threw burned tires and threw stones at them, RT reported.

In Gaza City, around 2 000 Palestinian protested outside the offices of the United Nations, with many holding signs venerating Arafat.

Wednesday’s protests came amid a weeks-long wave of violence, including gun, knife and car-ramming attacks by Palestinians.

Yasser Arafat died in a French military hospital in 2004 following a two-year Israeli siege of his compound.

“The inquiry committee has been able to identify the assassin of former president Yasser Arafat”, said Tawfiq Tirawi, the head of the probe opened in 2009.

Hamas has controlled the Gaza Strip after forcing out Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement, which dominates the PLO, in 2007.

Several Fatah and PLO officials accuse each other of passing the poison to Arafat, but each one rejects the accusations and claims they are following up the investigation in order to reach the right person who helped to kill him.

Hamas on Tuesday returned the residence of late Palestinian leader Yaser Arafat back into the custody of the Palestinian Liberation organization in a goodwill gesture aimed at amending ties, according to AFP.

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Home to a few 1.8 million Palestinians, Gaza has suffered a plummeting humanitarian situation due to an airtight blockade.

Rocket fired from Gaza lands in southern Israel