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
Strikes kill nine Iran-backed fighters near Iraq-Syria border: security officials
- Iraqi authorities denounced the “blatant attacks” on bases that belong to the Hashed Al-Shaabi
- Nine fighters were killed and another 10 wounded in the strikes
BAGHDAD: Air strikes killed at least nine Iran-backed fighters in Iraq on Thursday near the Iraqi-Syrian border, two senior security officials told AFP.
Iraqi authorities denounced the “blatant attacks” on bases that belong to the Hashed Al-Shaabi, a former paramilitary group now integrated into the regular army, which also encompasses brigades from Iran-backed armed groups.
Nine fighters were killed and another 10 wounded in the strikes that targeted a base housing the US-blacklisted Harakat Ansar Allah Al-Awfiya, two security officials said.
“The base was destroyed, and the rescue teams who arrived at the site were also targeted,” one of the officials said on condition of anonymity.
The base belongs to the Hashed Al-Shaabi or the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) whose positions have been repeatedly targeted in attacks blamed on the United States and Israel since the start of the war.
The PMF said nine of its members were killed in Thursday’s attack.
It accused the US of striking its sites, and said that these bases “had no role in targeting US bases in Iraq or elsewhere.”
The PMF added that “all fighters killed were carrying out their official duties, and some were stationed near the borders.”
And it called the Hashed Al-Shaabi an “essential part of Iraq’s security apparatus.”
Iraq has long been a proxy battleground between the United States and Iran, with the country’s successive governments struggling to balance relations between the two rivals.
It was immediately dragged into the Middle East war triggered when the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a loose alliance of several Iran-backed groups, have been claiming daily attacks against US bases in Iraq.
Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani denounced what he called “blatant attacks” on the PMF, whose members were “performing their sacred duty within the missions of our security forces.”
“This systematic and repeated aggression, and the targeting of sites and headquarters without distinction, is not merely a military violation. It represents a desperate attempt to create confusion” and weaken Iraq’s security.
