THE ISRAELI District Court’s decision not to grant the seriously ill freedom fighter Walid Daqqa – who has already served 37 years behind bars for his resistance to the Israeli occupation – an early release from prison due to his deteriorating health condition is tantamount to a death sentence, said the Daqqa family on Monday.
This came after the Israeli District Court in Lydda rejected the family’s appeal for the early release of their son.
Walid Daqqa has ended his actual life sentence, later commuted to 37 years, since March 24.
However, two more years were added to his sentence after he was accused of attempting to help prisoners to contact their families by phone.
The Daqqa family said in a statement that the court had rejected his early release despite the extreme danger to his life because of the deterioration in his health over the past five months.
They said he is still undergoing inappropriate treatment in the Ramle prison clinic.
The family statement said: ‘We, the family and the campaign for the release of the prisoner Walid Daqqa, consider any decision or judgment that does not lead to the immediate release of the prisoner Daqqa an authorisation to execute him by procrastinating in deciding on his release despite the very high degree of danger in his health condition, which was recognised even by the report of the occupation’s Prison Services.’
The family added that despite this report and the termination of his actual sentence five months ago, the court refused his immediate release.
They called on all political and popular parties to support their campaign at all levels in the Arab world and globally until Daqqa’s release, stressing that they will petition the Israeli Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, the Hamas resistance movement has mourned the death of 17-year-old Ramzi Hamed, who died on Monday of critical bullet wounds sustained two days ago when an extremist Jewish settler opened fire at him in Silwad town in Ramallah.
In a statement, Hamas affirmed that the Palestinian people would continue to stand strongly and bravely in the face of settlers’ terrorism and would respond firmly to Israeli crimes.
The movement stressed the need for international action to hold Israeli leaders and Jewish settlers to account for their crimes, especially against Palestinian children.
Hamas has vowed that the Palestinian people and the nation’s resistance fighters will not allow the ongoing Israeli atrocities throughout occupied Palestine to go unpunished.
Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem made the pledge on Sunday following the killing of three more Palestinians in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin by Israeli forces, describing the brutal crime as ‘an escalation in its (Israeli) aggression and continued terrorism against our people.’
‘The blood of martyrs will not be in vain,’ but will ‘fuel’ more acts of resistance and the glorious uprising and the great revolution’ against the Tel Aviv regime.
‘Our people’s will remains solid and won’t be broken by Israeli atrocities.’
Qaseem added that the recent escalation in Israeli crimes against the Palestinian population highlights the need to ‘work diligently to establish a national, practical plan to confront the occupation,’ with the help of all Palestinian factions.
Earlier last Sunday, Israeli regime forces opened fire on a vehicle near the town of Arraba, south of Jenin, killing all three Palestinian occupants.
They then prevented an ambulance from reaching the victims.
They also seized the corpses of the three Palestinian as well as the vehicle they were riding in.
The Western-backed Israeli regime and its troops carry out attacks against Palestinians throughout the occupied territories on a nearly daily basis, and over the past months, have ramped up attacks on Palestinian towns and cities.
As a result, dozens of Palestinians have been killed and many others illegally taken into custody.
More than 200 Palestinians have been killed so far this year in the occupied Palestinian territories and the besieged Gaza Strip. The majority of these fatalities have been recorded in the West Bank.
Hammas has strongly denounced Israeli right-wing security minister Itamar Ben Gvir for calling for the extremist Jewish settler who shot dead 19-year-old Palestinian Qusai Maatan during an attack on Burqa town in Ramallah last Friday to be awarded a medal.
In a statement on Sunday, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qasem said that Ben Gvir’s call to honour Maatan’s killer reflected the enormity of terrorism, fascism and racism that dominates the right-wing Israeli government’s policies.
Qasem also accused the Israeli government of disrespecting international law and behaving like a militia.
On Sunday, Ben Gvir praised the killer and called for him and other killers of Palestinians to be given ‘medals of honour’.
Last Friday night, a settler called Yehiel Indore fatally shot 19-year-old Qusai Matan in the neck outside the West Bank town of Burqa, close to Ramallah, on private Palestinian land.
The shooting happened when a horde of extremist settlers infiltrated Burqa town in the night before local residents spotted them and tried to fend them off.
Meanwhile on Sunday, Israeli occupation authorities (IOA) forcibly expelled six Palestinian families from their homes, near the West Bank city of Ramallah.
The IOA displaced the six families from their homes in the Bedouin community of al-Qabboun after carrying out a series of attacks against them.
‘At least 36 Palestinian citizens from the Ka’abnah clan were expelled from their homes,’ local sources and eyewitnesses reported, adding that they had been subjected to repeated Israeli and Jewish settlers’ attacks.
The sources stressed that the forcible expulsion of the families in the community constitutes part of the Israeli policy of ethnic cleansing, and concerns about expelling other communities are growing.
The head of the Jerusalemite Commission against Judaisation, Nasser al-Hadmi, has warned that grave danger threatens the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and has called on all Palestinian people to protect it against Israeli Judaisation plans.
In a press statement on Saturday, al-Hadmi stressed that the Israeli police deliberately expel Palestinian worshippers from the Al-Aqsa Mosque so as to facilitate the Jewish settlers’ incursions into the holy site.
Calls have been renewed on the Palestinian people to intensify their presence at the Al-Aqsa Mosque to protect it against the Israeli Judaisation plans and Jewish settlers’ attacks.
Jewish settlers have been escalating their raids into the Al-Aqsa Mosque since the start of the current year, especially near the al-Buraq wall, performing Talmudic prayers and attacking worshippers.
A new monthly report by the Palestinian Wall and Settlements Resistance Commission has revealed that there have been nearly 900 attacks against Palestinians and holy sites this year alone.
Attacks range from direct assaults on Palestinian people, vandalism of property, storming villages, uprooting trees and seizing and razing property.
The Commission noted that most of the 897 attacks were carried out in occupied Jerusalem (148 cases), followed by Nablus (140 cases) and al-Khalil (113 attacks).
They also point out that Israeli settlers carried out 202 attacks in various parts of the occupied West Bank but mainly in Nablus and Ramallah.
The report goes on to underline that there were 139 demolition orders, construction stops and forcible evacuation of Palestinian facilities issued by the Israeli regime in July alone – ‘a record rise that warns of many more demolitions in the next period.’
The occupation forces demolished 41 homes and commercial buildings, mainly in al-Khalil and Jerusalem, and Israeli forces and settlers vandalised a total of 2,552 trees, cutting them down and uprooting them, mainly in Nablus.
The Commission also noted that the Israeli regime considered a total of 33 building applications for Zionist settlers in July, during which the construction of 310 settlements was approved, while a total of 622 settlement units was proposed, affecting 925,328 dunums of occupied Palestinian land.
The Western-backed Tel Aviv regime has already occupied thousands of dunums of Palestinian agricultural land to construct and expand new illegal settler units in various areas throughout the West Bank and Jerusalem.
More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Jerusalem.
All Israeli settlements are illegal under international law. The United Nations Security Council has condemned Israel’s settlement activities in the occupied territories in several resolutions.
