JERUSALEM: Israel’s prime minister has vowed to change a street name in an Arab town honoring the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday before a cabinet meeting that he won’t allow streets “named after murderers of Israelis and Jews.”
Mohammed Watad, of Jatt council in northern Israel, told Channel 2 TV the sign has been up for nine years.
He pointed out that Arafat, together with then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.
Arafat is widely remembered in Israel as leading militants who targeted civilians. Palestinians view him as a national icon of their movement for independence.
Arabs in Israel enjoy full rights but face discrimination in some areas. Many identify politically and culturally with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Netanyahu vows to remove Arafat street sign in Arab town
Netanyahu vows to remove Arafat street sign in Arab town
Israel holds 9,500 Palestinian prisoners as of March
- Administrative detainees represent 36 percent of all Palestinians in Israeli prisons
LONDON: Israeli prison authorities held 9,500 prisoners and detainees as of the first week of March, indicating a 2.15 percent increase from February, according to reports from Palestinian prisoners’ organizations.
Currently, there are 73 female prisoners and 350 individuals under the age of 18 detained in the notorious prisons of Megiddo and Ofer.
The number of administrative detainees is 3,442, the highest percentage among those sentenced, arrested, or classified as “unlawful combatants.” They represent 36 percent of all Palestinians in Israeli prisons, where individuals can be indefinitely detained without charge in military detention centers.
There are also 1,249 “unlawful combatants” detained from inside the Gaza Strip after Oct. 7, 2023, as well as those who were detained from Lebanon and Syria.
