"Palestinian rally for hunger-striker" by Ian Deitch | Associated Press, February 16, 2013
JERUSALEM — Palestinians clashed with Israeli soldiers on Friday at several demonstrations in the West Bank held to support a prisoner observing an intermittent hunger strike to protest his incarceration.
Related: Slow Saturday Specials: Inside Guantanamo
So much for the media attention being manipulated by the prisoners.
The Israeli military said about 500 Palestinians threw rocks and rolled burning tires at soldiers who responded with tear gas during the main rally outside Ofer prison in the West Bank. The protesters called for the release of Samer Issawi, who has been on an on-again, off-again hunger strike for several months as he serves time for alleged terror activity.
Protests spread to several other West Bank flashpoints which turned violent as well. Palestinian medics said they treated dozens of people for tear gas inhalation and minor wounds sustained from rubber bullets. Two Israeli soldiers were lightly injured, the military said.
The prisoner issue is an emotional one for Palestinians. Palestinians generally view them as heroes, regardless of the reason for their imprisonment.
Most of them have never been charged, been detained indefinitely like hostages, and many are children!
Issawi, 35, was initially released in 2011 in a prisoner exchange. Israeli Prison Service spokeswoman Sivan Weizman said he was arrested after he violated the terms of his release. She said he had been arrested for ‘‘terror activity’’ and sentenced to 26 years, but was released in the 2011 prisoner swap after serving only six years.
Standard Israeli tactic: release and rearrest.
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Related: Sunday Globe Specials: Palestinian Prisoners Fast
They grab a meal when they can.
"Palestinians rally for those held by Israel" Associated Press, February 19, 2013
BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Palestinians blocked roads and held marches across the West Bank on Monday to protest the fate of thousands of their countrymen held in Israeli jails and to demand the release of four detainees on hunger strike.
The hunger strikers include Samer Issawi, 35, whose health has severely deteriorated after staging an on-again, off-again strike for more than 200 days. The men were all in stable condition, said a spokeswoman for Israel’s prison authority, Sivan Weizman.
Is Israel force-feeding them?
Israel is holding about 4,500 Palestinians for charges ranging from throwing stones to undertaking deadly militant attacks. Their incarceration is a sensitive issue for Palestinians, who see them as heroes of their struggle for liberation from the Jewish state.
Hundreds of men and women in the southern town of Hebron brandished flags of different Palestinian factions. Other demonstrators held up photographs of their loved ones behind bars.
Near Bethlehem, Israeli forces chased protesters who blocked a major West Bank road. Soldiers hurled tear gas and stun grenades between jammed cars as Palestinians blocked traffic.
There were no reports of injuries.
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"Palestinians clash with Israeli troops" by DALIA NAMMARI | Associated Press, February 22, 2013
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Hundreds of Palestinian protesters clashed with Israeli security forces Thursday, hurling rocks and burning tires at a West Bank demonstration to show solidarity with Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Palestinians have staged protests across the West Bank all week in solidarity with the 4,500 prisoners held by Israel. Four of the prisoners are staging a hunger strike, and the worsening condition of one, Samer Issawi, sparked the latest round of unrest between the protesters and Israeli troops.
His hunger strike has drawn international attention from notables such as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
Issawi is incarcerated for violating the terms of his release from a previous prison term. On Thursday, an Israeli court sentenced him for eight months from the day of his arrest on July 7, meaning he could be freed as early as next month.
But Palestinian officials said it wasn’t a done deal because Issawi also faces separate charges in a military court, and there were no indications that he planned to end his hunger strike.
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"Detainee’s death sparks demand for inquiry, talk of intifada; Israel rejects torture claim; thousands on hunger strike" by Jodi Rudoren | New York Times, February 25, 2013
JERUSALEM — Palestinian officials on Sunday called for an international inquiry into the death of a 30-year-old prisoner in an Israeli jail, saying the man was tortured during interrogation, as thousands of Palestinian prisoners went on a one-day hunger strike in protest.
“Israel is responsible for what happened,’’ Issa Qaraqa, the Palestinian minister for prisoner affairs, said at a news conference in Ramallah, in the West Bank.
‘‘I accuse the state of Israel of subjecting him to tough physical and psychological pressure,’’ Qaraqa said. ‘‘He was subjected to a heavy and severe torture.’’
When prisoners die in state custody, they are culpable.
Israeli authorities dismissed such claims, saying the prisoner, Arafat Jaradat, died of a heart attack. An autopsy was scheduled for Sunday, with a Palestinian forensic specialist and a relative of Jaradat’s scheduled to attend.
Amid intensifying demonstrations in the West Bank that some officials and analysts see as the stirrings of a third intifada, or uprising, Israel on Sunday transferred to the Palestinian Authority $100 million in tax revenue it had withheld.
Even those psychopaths realize the damage done.
Isaac Molho, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s special envoy, also sent a message to the Palestinian leadership that Israeli officials described as an ‘‘unequivocal demand to restore quiet on the ground.’’
What are they supposed to do?
Israel has refused Palestinian requests to release four prisoners who have been on long-term hunger strikes or 123 people who have been detained since before the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993.
‘‘Some of these people are accused of very heinous crimes,’’ a senior Israeli official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter with the news media. ‘‘They’re saying that every Palestinian hunger striker should have a get-out-of-jail-free card. You can’t have a system like that. It’s not sustainable.’’
After days of demonstrations in solidarity with the hunger strikers that have included clashes with Israeli soldiers, hundreds of Palestinians turned out Sunday in cities and villages to protest Saturday’s death of Jaradat, who relatives said worked in a gas station and was the father of a 4-year-old girl and 2-year-old boy.
And Israel tortured him to death.
Demonstrators in Gaza waved flags of Palestinian political factions along with banners reading ‘‘Tortured.’’
“We will resort to all means to liberate the prisoners,’’ said Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, the militant Islamist party that rules Gaza Strip.
Atallah Abu al-Sabah, Hamas’s minister of prisoner affairs, criticized Palestinian leaders in the West Bank for their handling of the issue and called for kidnapping Israeli soldiers.
That just lowers you to their level. Don't do it.
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"Palestinian who died in Israeli custody gets hero’s funeral" by Mohammed Daraghmeh | Associated Press, February 26, 2013
SAEER, West Bank — A Palestinian man who died under disputed circumstances in Israeli custody was given a hero’s funeral Monday as thousands thronged his gravesite and Palestinian police fired a gun salute.
Palestinian officials, citing an autopsy, said Arafat Jaradat was tortured. Israeli officials said more tests are needed to determine the cause of death, and Israel’s public security minister said he would allow an international expert to review the autopsy results.
The weekend death of the 30-year-old gas station attendant and father of two came amid rising West Bank tensions that have prompted talk in Israel about the possibility of a new Palestinian uprising.
The office of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said Monday he was consulting with security officials, while United Nations envoy Robert Serry warned that ‘‘mounting tensions present a real risk of destabilization.’’
In recent days, there have been frequent Palestinian protests in support of some 4,600 Palestinians held by Israel, particularly four inmates who have staged extended hunger strikes.
Palestinian medical officials said two Palestinian youths, one 13 and one 16, were seriously wounded by live fire in a clash on Monday.
An Israeli military spokesman said the military was looking into the claim. He said protesters hurled ‘‘improvised hand grenades’’ toward a holy site in the Bethlehem area, endangering worshipers, at which point soldiers fired at the legs of a Palestinian, lightly injuring him.
Israel’s military has said it typically uses nonlethal means to disperse violent protests but occasionally uses live fire when soldiers feel they are in a life-threatening situation. Palestinians have increasingly complained of the military’s use of live fire at protests.
Palestinian and Israeli officials traded accusations Monday, each saying the other was trying to exploit the latest unrest for political gains.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Israel is trying to provoke Palestinians with increasingly lethal methods used by security forces.
They do it every time peace talk gets started.
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev alleged that Abbas’s self-rule government in the West Bank is inciting violence against Israel. Palestinian officials have called for more solidarity rallies.
Abbas has said he would not allow an armed uprising. But tensions have been rising in recent days.
At Monday’s funeral, thousands marched behind Jaradat’s body as the procession snaked through his home town of Saeer.
Abbas Zaki, a senior member of Abbas’s Fatah movement, called Jaradat’s death an Israeli crime. ‘‘I am telling Fatah members that our enemy only understands the language of force,’’ he told the crowd.
Jaradat was arrested on Feb. 18 on suspicion he had thrown stones at Israelis. He died Saturday after several days of interrogation. Jaradat’s brother, Mohammed, said he saw the body and believed his brother was severely beaten.
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Now let's see, what would distract attention from this story?
"Militants fire rocket into Israel, raising tensions; Attack prompted by recent death of jailed Palestinian" by Jodi Rudoren | New York Times, February 27, 2013
JERUSALEM — For the first time in more than three months, at least one rocket fired from the Gaza Strip landed in southern Israel early Tuesday morning, according to Israeli authorities, breaking a cease-fire that had been in place after eight days of intense violence between Israel and Gaza last fall.
Related: The Gaza Rocket Squads
Who benefits?
The Israeli police and military reported that a single Grad rocket landed in a road outside the city of Ashkelon, causing damage but no injuries.
Those zettlers sure do have bad aim!
A subgroup of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the military wing of the Palestinians’ Fatah faction, said in an e-mail that it had fired the rocket in ‘‘an initial natural response to the assassination of prisoner Arafat Jaradat,’’ a 30-year-old Palestinian who died in an Israeli jail Saturday. The statement also said that Palestinians ‘‘should resist their enemy with all available means.’’
Well, that's not Hamas! Either Fatah is a Zionist tool, or this didn't happen as portrayed by my Zionist-owned media.
Palestinian officials have blamed Jaradat’s death on what they described as ‘‘severe torture’’ during interrogation after his arrest Feb. 21 for throwing rocks at Israeli settlers in November.
Wow, Israeli settlers (as if no one was there?) are never interrogated, let alone arrested, for such things.
Israeli authorities said that an autopsy conducted Sunday could not determine the cause of death and that the bruising and broken ribs the Palestinians cited as evidence of torture could have been caused by resuscitation efforts....
Uh-huh.
Mushir al-Masri, a Hamas lawmaker, said in an interview that the statement from the Al Aqsa group was a ‘‘fabrication’’ and that Hamas ‘‘did not find that any of the working and known resistance groups have fired any projectile.’’
Who would want to divide Palestinians?
In any case, Masri said Israel was ‘‘fully responsible for the consequences of the wave of the Palestinian public fury.’’ He also accused Israel of violating the cease-fire first, citing several incidents in which Gazans have been shot near the strip’s borders with Israel and fishermen attacked at sea; Israeli authorities have said their soldiers and sailors were only responding to efforts to breach the new limits set out in the cease-fire agreement.
This Israeli harassment happens very day.
After the rocket fire Tuesday, Israel shut Kerem Shalom, the crossing through which commercial goods enter Gaza from Israel, and closed its Erez border crossing except for medical, humanitarian, and ‘‘exceptional’’ cases, according to a statement from the military.
And WHO BENEFITS?
Sari Bashi, executive director of Gisha, a group that advocates for lifting Israel’s restrictions on the Gaza Strip, protested the closures in a letter to Israel’s defense minister, saying the timing raised ‘‘serious concern that this is not a travel restriction necessitated by a concrete and weighty security imperative but rather a punitive act aimed at Gaza’s civilian population.’’ She called the move ‘‘a dangerous regression to a policy that violates humanitarian law.’’
The rocket fire came after several days of demonstrations in Gaza and across the West Bank in solidarity with hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners and in protest of Jaradat’s death. Many of the protests had been marked by clashes between the protesters and Israeli soldiers and settlers, with two Palestinian teenagers sustaining serious gunshot wounds Monday at Rachel’s Tomb, near Bethlehem.
During a rally Sunday in Gaza, Hamas officials had expressed frustration with its rival Fatah faction in the West Bank for not doing more to support the prisoners.
So they fired off a rocket and allowed Israel to crack down on their brother?
Attallah Abu Al-Sebah, Hamas’s minister of prisoner affairs, urged Fatah ‘‘to set the hand of resistance free to deter the occupation and stop its crimes against the prisoners,’’ and called for kidnapping Israeli soldiers ‘‘instead of pursuing playful negotiations that brought nothing to the Palestinian cause.’’
Adnan Damiri, a spokesman for the Palestinian security services in the West Bank, accused Hamas of wanting ‘‘to make chaos in the Palestinian territories’’ and working against the Palestinian Authority and its security force.
Israeli officials have been holding special security consultations about how to handle the changing landscape and have sent messages to the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank urging calm. President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority accused Israel on Monday of fomenting chaos.
The Israelis shitting their pants!?
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"Jailed Palestinians end hunger strike" by Ian Deitch | Associated Press, March 01, 2013
JERUSALEM — Two Palestinian prisoners held by Israel have ended their hunger strike of nearly three months, and two other hunger strikers have been hospitalized, an Israeli official said Thursday.
The prisoners who ended their fast did so because an Israeli military prosecutor told them that he would not seek to extend their detention at a hearing next week, said their lawyer, Jawad Boulous.
The two prisoners, Tarek Qaadan and Jafar Ezzeldeen, are being held without charges or trial, in so-called administrative detention.
Sivan Weizman, a spokeswoman for Israel’s prison service, said the two started eating on Wednesday, ending a fast that began Dec. 3. Two other prisoners on hunger strikes were hospitalized to prevent their health from further deterioration, Weizman said.
They must be force feeding them like the U.S does at Gitmo.
Palestinians have been protesting in support of the hunger strikers and have warned of a backlash if any of them died.
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"Tensions rise after flare-up on Israel-Gaza border" by Isabel Kershner | New York Times, April 04, 2013
JERUSALEM — Israeli-Palestinian tensions rose sharply Wednesday, with a resumption of clashes over the Israel-Gaza border as Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails declared a three-day hunger strike to protest the death Tuesday of a fellow inmate, a death that the Palestinians blamed on Israel.
Another one?
In response to rockets fired from Gaza into southern Israel, apparently in support of the Palestinian prisoners, the Israeli military said it carried out an airstrike in Gaza late Tuesday, its first since a cease-fire that ended eight days of fierce cross-border fighting in November. Warplanes struck two open areas in northern Gaza, causing no damage or casualties, the military said.
Not even a hole in the earth? Israel's military doesn't even leave a mark, huh?
Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza, called the airstrikes a clear violation of the cease-fire.
“We call on international parties to intervene immediately to end the Israeli escalation and also the violations against the prisoners,’’ he said.
They don't hear you.
The rocket fire from Gaza was the third such violation of the cease-fire brokered by Egypt in November, evidence of its fragility.
An Islamic extremist group in Gaza, the Mujahadeen Shura Council-Environs of Jerusalem, claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s rocket fire, saying that it was in support of the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. The group criticized other Palestinian factions for their inaction on the prisoner issue.
Not helping with the rocket fire, and thus this is an Israeli false flag!
On Wednesday morning, Gaza militants fired two more rockets into southern Israel. One landed at the entrance of the Israeli border town of Sderot, according to the police, and the other fell in open ground. Neither caused injuries.
The tensions in the south came amid signs in the north of increasing spillover from Syria’s bloody civil war. The Israeli military destroyed a Syrian post with tank fire Tuesday after shots were fired from the Syrian side at an Israeli army jeep in the Israeli-held Golan Heights. Earlier that day, a mortar shell from Syria sailed over the Israeli-Syrian cease-fire line and crashed into a field, according to the Israeli military.
I suspect another false flag there because Israel is itching to bite off more of the Golan.
The UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Robert H. Serry, called the situation volatile and said it was ‘‘of paramount importance to refrain from violence in this tense atmosphere and for parties to work constructively in addressing the underlying issues.’’
“The renewed violations of the cease-fire risk undermining the ‘understanding’ reached between Israel and Gaza on 21 November, and unraveling the gradual but tangible improvements achieved since then in the easing of the closure and the security situation in Gaza and southern Israel,’’ he said.
In a statement Wednesday referring to the fire from both Gaza and Syria, Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, said, ‘‘We will not allow shooting of any sort, even sporadic, toward our citizens and our forces.’’
He added, ‘‘As soon as we identify the source of the fire, we will take it down without hesitation, as we did last night and in previous cases.’’
But analysts said that neither Israel nor Hamas appeared eager to escalate the situation and that both sides were acting to restore the calm.
The highly charged issue of Palestinian prisoners came to the fore again after the Palestinian leadership accused Israel of deliberately delaying the treatment of Maysara Abu Hamdiya, 64, who received a diagnosis of throat cancer two months ago and died in an Israeli hospital Tuesday.
Hamdiya, a resident of the West Bank and a retired general in the Palestinian Authority security services, was detained by Israel in 2002, at the height of the second Palestinian uprising, and was serving a life term for attempted murder after sending a suicide bomber to a cafe in Jerusalem, Israeli officials said. The bomb failed to detonate.
Hamdiya’s death came amid efforts by the Western-backed Palestinian leadership to place the prisoner issue high on the diplomatic agenda, with the Obama administration calling for a renewal of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Related: Obama's Trip to Israel
Looks like he was taken prisoner himself.
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"Jailed Palestinian’s death triggers West Bank unrest; Prisoner’s cancer went untreated, leaders charge" by Isabel Kershner | New York Times, April 05, 2013
JERUSALEM — The funeral of a Palestinian prisoner who died of cancer in Israeli custody set off displays of angry defiance Thursday in the West Bank city of Hebron. Masked gunmen loyal to the Palestinian president fired into the air to underscore calls for vengeance, and clashes erupted between Israeli soldiers and youths burning tires and hurling stones.
Near the city of Tulkarm, the burial of two other Palestinians killed in clashes with Israeli forces Wednesday also became a rallying point for mourners calling for continued resistance against Israeli occupation.
Unrest in the West Bank, which has been simmering for months, has raised the specter of a wider explosion of violence with some Palestinians in Hebron calling for a new uprising to liberate Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. The charged atmosphere did not bode well for diplomacy, with Secretary of State John F. Kerry expected in the region next week in part to try to find a formula to restart peace negotiations.
I thought we already settled that. He just cancelled the latest round.
The Palestinian leadership accused Israel of harming the US effort.
“This escalation proves that the Israeli government only looks at reality through brute power, settlement activities, and Judaization,’’ Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the spokesman for President Mahmoud Abbas, said in a statement.
You may not like it, but it is the truth.
Thousands in Hebron attended the funeral of the prisoner, Maysara Abu Hamdiya, 64, who died of cancer that, according to an Israeli autopsy, began in the vocal cords and had spread to the lungs, neck, chest, liver, spine, and ribs. The Palestinians have accused Israeli authorities of deliberately delaying his diagnosis and treatment. The Israeli prison service said a committee will examine the circumstances of his death.
Related: DiMasi is Dying
A retired general in the Palestinian Authority security services, Hamdiya was buried with military honors. He was detained by Israel in 2002, at the height of the second Palestinian uprising, and was serving a life term for attempted murder for his involvement in a failed suicide bombing in a Jerusalem cafe.
The thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails hold a hallowed place in Palestinian society as heroic fighters for the cause, and Hamdiya’s death has stirred outrage. Abbas and his prime minister, Salam Fayyad, have been among Palestinians accusing Israeli of embracing a policy of medical negligence.
Is that why he had to resign?
The Palestinian Authority’s minister of prisoner affairs, Issa Qaraqe, attended Hamdiya’s funeral along with many local dignitaries.
Hamdiya’s hometown, Hebron, in the southern West Bank, is notoriously volatile, with a few hundred Jewish settlers living amid about 170,000 Palestinians.
His death appeared to have unified the deeply divided Palestinians, at least temporarily. Flags of all the rival political and militant factions were raised in the crowds, including those of Fatah, the mainstream secularist party led by Abbas, and its rivals, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
See: Save the PA
With Palestinians in the city on a general strike, dozens of masked militiamen of Fatah’s Al Aksa Martyrs’ Brigade, who have mostly lain low in recent years, attended the funeral.
In a speech, a spokesman for the group said, ‘‘We will not allow the Israelis to kill our people, especially the prisoners.’’
He added, ‘‘We are calling on President Abbas to give us a green light to react to what happened to Maysara Abu Hamdiya.’’ The Israeli military reported groups of stone-throwing Palestinians on the main road to Hebron and at another location in the northern West Bank.
The Israeli military said that youths near the West Bank city of Tulkarm hurled firebombs at soldiers, who responded with live fire, killing two youths.
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"Palestinian professor gets premier post" by Isabel Kershner | New York Times, June 03, 2013
JERUSALEM — President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority appointed the president of a large West Bank university to serve as his next prime minister on Sunday, replacing Salam Fayyad, who resigned in mid-April.
The appointment of Rami Hamdallah, 54, a professor with no previous experience in government, ended a leadership vacuum created by Fayyad’s resignation over internal differences. Fayyad, an internationally respected economist, had agreed to stay on as a caretaker prime minister.
In the long term, however, the political outlook for the Palestinian Authority remained hazy.
In announcing the appointment, the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, said that Abbas remained committed to the reconciliation agreements his Fatah Party has signed with Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls Gaza, and that he was eager to stick to the timetable agreed upon in Cairo.
The two sides met in the Egyptian capital last month and agreed to form a technocratic unity government within three months to pave the way for elections.
Palestinian officials and analysts said the Cairo timetable aimed for the formation of a unity government by sometime in August, while the Wafa announcement on Sunday did not specify any deadlines, leaving Abbas some leeway.
But Fatah and Hamas have failed to carry out previous accords. Hamas is wary of elections while Abbas has his relations with Israel and the West to consider.
Secretary of State John Kerry is in the midst of an intensive effort to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. Israel has said that a Palestinian unity government with Hamas, which does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, would contradict peace efforts.
Hamdallah has not played a prominent role in Palestinian politics and is better known as a technocrat, though Palestinian insiders described him as being close to Fatah....
Did that make USrael happy?
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