REHOVOT: A Palestinian who has not eaten for months in protest at his detention without charge by Israel is close to suffering a collapse, his mother said, after demonstrators called for him and others also on hunger strike to be released.
Miqdad Al-Qawasmi’s weight has nearly halved since July 21, when he began refusing food and drinking only water with salt, his family says.
His protest, and parallel hunger strikes by five other detainees also from the occupied West Bank, are in response to being placed in administrative detention, under which Israel can hold Palestinians it views as suspects for up to 60 days without charge and extend that period with court approval.
The United Nations and European Union have criticized the practice.
Unable to speak, Qawasmi, 24, is the frailest of the six.
“His health condition is collapsing due to continuous hunger strike; he is at high risk,” Qawasmi’s mother, Iman Qawasmi, told Reuters last week at the intensive care unit at Kaplan hospital in Rehovot, near Tel Aviv.
.”..Why is no one intervening in saving the life of a human being?“
He spent several weeks at the hospital before being moved back to a clinic at Ramle prison.
Qawasmi was arrested in January. An Israeli security official said his administrative detention was “well-founded on intelligence that was presented to a court” regarding his involvement in activity linked to Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. This status had been suspended given his hospitalization, the official added.
Palestinians have staged protests in the West Bank, part of territory Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war, in support of Qawasmi and the other five hunger strikers.
“We call on the Palestinian Authority to mobilize its resources... to ensure international solidarity with the prisoners,” demonstrator Omar Assaf said on Tuesday during a protest in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
There are some 500 Palestinians being held in Israeli jails under administrative detention, Palestinian officials say. Israel has never released the figures.
Palestinians demand Israel release prisoner on 112-day hunger strike
https://arab.news/jmd32
Palestinians demand Israel release prisoner on 112-day hunger strike
Iran temporarily closes airspace to most flights
WASHINGTON: Iran temporarily closed its airspace to all flights except international ones to and from Iran with official permission at 5:15 p.m. ET on Wednesday, according to a notice posted on the Federal Aviation Administration’s website.
The prohibition is set to last for more than two hours until 7:30 p.m. ET, or 0030 GMT, but could be extended, the notice said. The United States was withdrawing some personnel from bases in the Middle East, a US official said on Wednesday, after a senior Iranian official said Tehran had warned neighbors it would hit American bases if Washington strikes.
Missile and drone barrages in a growing number of conflict zones represent a high risk to airline traffic. India’s largest airline, IndiGo said some of its international flights would be impacted by Iran’s sudden airspace closure. A flight by Russia’s Aeroflot bound for Tehran returned to Moscow after the closure, according to tracking data from Flightradar24.
Earlier on Wednesday, Germany issued a new directive cautioning the country’s airlines from entering Iranian airspace, shortly after Lufthansa rejigged its flight operations across the Middle East amid escalating tensions in the region.
The United States already prohibits all US commercial flights from overflying Iran and there are no direct flights between the countries. Airline operators like flydubai and Turkish Airlines have canceled multiple flights to Iran in the past week. “Several airlines have already reduced or suspended services, and most carriers are avoiding Iranian airspace,” said Safe Airspace, a website run by OPSGROUP, a membership-based organization that shares flight risk information.
“The situation may signal further security or military activity, including the risk of missile launches or heightened air defense, increasing the risk of misidentification of civil traffic.” Lufthansa said on Wednesday that it would bypass Iranian and Iraqi airspace until further notice while it would only operate day flights to Tel Aviv and Amman from Wednesday until Monday next week so that crew would not have to stay overnight.
Some flights could also be canceled as a result of these actions, it added in a statement. Italian carrier ITA Airways, in which Lufthansa Group is now a major shareholder, said that it would similarly suspend night flights to Tel Aviv until Tuesday next week.
