Anti-PA activist’s death during arrest sparks protests throughout West Bank
PA Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh on Thursday ordered the formation of a special commission of inquiry to investigate the death of Nizar Banat, a prominent anti-corruption activist from the Hebron area.
Banat, 44, a longtime critic of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, died during a raid by PA security officers on his home in the town of Dura. Banat’s relatives said about 25 security officers severely beat him with clubs and other objects while he was still asleep.
Some Palestinians compared his death to the gruesome killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was assassinated at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018 by agents of the Saudi government.
The death of Banat triggered a wave of protests by many Palestinians, who accused the PA of “assassinating” the activist. In graphic photos that surfaced on social media, Banat appeared to have many bruises on his body.
During a demonstration organized by youth groups in Ramallah, protesters shouted slogans calling for the removal of Abbas from office. PA policemen used tear gas and clubs to disperse the protesters and prevent them from approaching his headquarters.
Similar protests took place in other West Bank towns, as well as the Gaza Strip.
PA security forces have arrested dozens of Palestinian political activists and social media users since Abbas’s decision in late April to call off the parliamentary and presidential elections, which were supposed to take place on May 22 and July 31, respectively.
Many of the detainees have been accused of affiliation with Hamas and ousted Fatah operative Mohammed Dahlan, an arch-rival of Abbas who is based in the United Arab Emirates. Others have been accused of “insulting” Abbas and other senior Palestinian figures on social media platforms.
PA Governor of Hebron Jibreen al-Bakri said in a statement that Banat’s health “deteriorated” during the raid on his home. Banat was rushed to the Hebron hospital, where he was
was classified on Thursday as red according to the ministry’s traffic light system used to monitor the pandemic indicators of all municipalities in Israel, marking the first time that a city turned red in months. According to reports, the authorities are considering canceling all informal education activities in the town.
As of Thursday, 330 children and 30 teachers were positive to the virus, with a few thousand in isolation.
In total, the number of active cases stood at 789 after it had dropped below 200 in recent weeks. At the peak of the pandemic, 88,000 people were infected.
Residents of Ashkelon were asked to get tested for coronavirus if they were experiencing any symptoms such as fever or coughing after the Health Ministry said it found traces of the Delta variant in the city’s wastewater.
The Health Ministry’s national lab for environmental virology has been surveying the city’s sewage as part of an early-detection project since around February, according to the head of the lab, Dr. Itay Bar-Or.
He told The Jerusalem Post that the traces of the virus in the sewage surprised the ministry and raised concerns that city residents have been infected with the virus, despite there being no confirmed cases as of yet.
“There are no known asymptomatic or symptomatic cases in Ashkelon and yet we still got the traces of the virus in the sewage, so it suggests that there are people that have the virus,” Bar-Or explained. He said he expects cases to go up once people are screened.
The ministry program has been monitoring all of Israel for the past year, but Bar-Or said he was not at liberty to say if the Delta variant had been identified in other cities as of late.
He said the lab has recommended stepping-up monitoring given the situation in Ashkelon.
This is not the first time the Health Ministry discovered infection through wastewater. In March, the Health Ministry reported an Israeli coronavirus mutation that was discovered at the end of the previous year through the sewage sequencing project, first in Rahat and then in Netanya and Haifa.
In recent days, the number of serious patients has also registered a slight increase, from its lowest since last summer, 21 on Saturday, to 27 on Thursday. In January, however, serious cases were over 1,200.
“We almost do not see any serious morbidity,” the Health Ministry’s Director-General Chezy Levy said to Channel 12. “If we do, we will consider additional restrictions.”
In the meantime, the vaccination
campaign is slowly regaining speed. On Wednesday, over 10,000 shots were administered for the first time in two months. Of those, almost 7,000 were first doses given to children aged 12-15, marking another significant increase compared to the previous day, when about 4,100 teens were inoculated, and to Monday, when the number stood at 2,600.
The government has indicated that inoculation of the age group 12-15 is one of the priorities to contain the new outbreak.
As announced by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett earlier in the week, Ash said that currently all vaccines Israel possesses are due to expire at the end of July. While Israel is working to obtain new doses to make sure it has vaccines also in August, this has not been confirmed.
The government is working on several fronts to contain the new surge in cases.
The obligation to wear masks has already been restored at the airport and in
medical facilities, and the enforcement of regulations, including quarantine requirements for people returning from abroad has been stepped up. Ash said that additional technological tools, including electronic bracelets are being considered for those who are required to enter quarantine and recommendations will be made to the government.
Furthermore, Bennett announced on Wednesday that the entry of vaccinated foreign nationals, which was supposed to be allowed from July 1, was postponed to August 1.
Some 11 of the new cases identified on Wednesday arrived from abroad, seven of whom were fully vaccinated. Overall, about half of the identified virus carriers in the past month had been inoculated. However, according to Ash this should not come as a surprise.
“There are a high number of vaccinated people in Israel, so it is normal that we see vaccinated people who get infected. It does not say anything about the efficacy of the vaccine,” he said. “We know that the vaccine is not 100% effective but some percentage points less than that.”
Israeli health officials and experts are checking the data about the spread of the Delta variant in the country, but Ash noted that the information published about what is happening in the UK shows the Pfizer vaccine is very effective against it.
“The data we have today, accumulated from research we are conducting at the lab, and including data from those places where the Indian variant, Delta, has replaced the British variant as the common variant, point to our vaccine being very effective, around 90%, in preventing the coronavirus disease, COVID-19,” Alon Rappaport, Pfizer’s medical director in Israel, told local broadcaster Army Radio earlier in the day.
According to KAN, the new coronavirus cabinet will convene
for its first meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office on Sunday night.
Reuters contributed to this report. •