Israelis, Palestinians clash outside prison
Palestinian shot and killed
OFER PRISON , April 20, (Agencies): Several dozen Palestinian protesters clashed with Israeli forces Thursday outside a prison where detainees are on a hunger strike, while a group of Israeli hardliners nearby taunted prisoners by barbecuing.
Some 1,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have joined a hunger strike against conditions that began Monday, according to the Palestinian Authority’s detainees’ affairs department.
The hunger strike has been led by prominent prisoner and popular Palestinian leader
who is serving five life sentences over his role in the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising.
Security forces fired tear gas, sound grenades and rubber bullets at the crowd of Palestinians who threw stones and protested in support of the detainees outside Israel’s Ofer prison north of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank.
It was not immediately clear if anyone was injured in the clashes.
Palestinian Prisoners Club head Qadura Fares told AFP at the protest that Israel would allow all the strikers, including Barghouti, access to lawyers, in a reversal of its previous position.
Access to lawyers had been prevented following the start of the strike, Palestinian officials said, with Barghouti moved to solitary confinement.
The Israel Prisons Service said it was acting under its rules, without elaborating further.
Barghouti
Abstention
A small number of Israeli hardliners held a barbecue nearby on the opposite side of a checkpoint, saying they hoped the smell would make prisoners’ abstention harder.
Around a dozen Israelis grilled chicken and other kinds of meat, with a number of Israeli soldiers joining them to eat.
“At this moment (the hunger strikers) will smell the food’s scent and maybe later in the evening they will see it on television,” event organiser Ofer Sofer told AFP in front of two barbecue pits.
“It is a bunch of terrorists that are threatening us with hunger strike. We are happy that they are on strike. Let them have this strike as long as they want.”
They called for tough punishments for the protesting Palestinians, including worsening their conditions.
Some 6,500 Palestinians are currently detained by Israel for a range of offences and alleged crimes.
Around 500 are held under administrative detention, which allows for imprisonment without charge.
Palestinian prisoners have mounted repeated hunger strikes, but rarely on such a scale.
Palestinian shot and killed:
Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian driver who rammed his car into a bus stop in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday injuring a pedestrian, the army and a hospital spokesman said.
An army statement said the car rammed a bus stop at Gush Etzion Junction, a busy intersection near a cluster of Israeli West Bank settlements, injuring an Israeli civilian. Troops responded by shooting at the driver.
Pictures from the scene showed a car that had collided with the back of a bus standing in a bus stop.
David Gavriel, a surgeon at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek hospital, said the man in his 20s had suffered multiple wounds including gunshot wounds to the head. He arrived with no vital signs and was pronounced dead after resuscitation efforts failed. The pedestrian suffered light to moderate injuries.
The Palestinian heath ministry identified the dead man as 21-year-old Suhaib Mashahra, from the village of Sawahreh near the West Bank town of Bethlehem.
The incident was the latest in a long list of sporadic street attacks by Palestinians and came six days after a Palestinian man stabbed a British student to death on a tram in Jerusalem.
A wave of street attacks by Palestinians in Israel, Jerusalem and the Israeli-occupied West Bank since October 2015 has killed 37 Israelis, two American tourists and a British student. At least 243 Palestinians have died during the period of sporadic violence.
Israel says at least 163 of the Palestinians killed had launched stabbing, shooting or car ramming attacks. Others died during clashes and protests.
Israel has accused the Palestinian leadership of inciting the violence.
The Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank, denies incitement and charges that in many cases, Israel has used excessive force in thwarting attackers armed with rudimentary weapons.
Israel policeman fired:
An Israeli policeman caught on video beating up a Palestinian truck driver in east Jerusalem last month has been fired from the force, police said on Thursday.
The video, widely circulated on social media, shows the uniformed officer curse the driver, then headbutt him in the face and kick him in the legs.
Other Palestinians are seen trying to reason with the policeman only for him to turn on them also.
Thursday’s police statement said the officer was notified of the decision on Wednesday and his dismissal would take effect within 14 days.
“It was an exceptional and violent incident which goes against all the values of the Israel Police,” it said.
“A policeman who behaves in such a manner has no place in the Israel Police.”
A Palestinian witness filmed the incident, which took place in a car park near the interior ministry in the Wadi Joz area of annexed east Jerusalem, and handed a copy to an Israeli journalist.