HOTELS and restaurants in the Gaza Strip suspended serving meals and drinks on Tuesday from 9am to 3pm, and instead served their customers a mixture of salt and water, in solidarity with hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners, who had been consuming the same mixture in Israeli prisons for 16 days as of Tuesday.
Head of the Palestinian Committee for Restaurants, Hotels, and Tourist Services Salah Abu Hassireh told Ma’an that the staff of fifty hotels and restaurants welcomed their customers wearing shirts reading ‘Salt and Water’ and ‘Dignity is the Dessert,’ referencing the slogan of the ‘Freedom and Dignity’ hunger strike.
Some 1,500 political prisoners launched the open-ended hunger strike on Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, April 17, under the aegis of imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi, demanding of basic rights, such as an end to the policies of administrative detention, solitary confinement, and deliberate medical negligence.
Samer Issawi, one of the hunger-striking prisoners and a representative for hunger strikers affiliated with the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), announced on Tuesday that DFLP-affiliated prisoners would begin refusing water on May 7 if the Israel Prison Service (IPS) continues to ignore the demands of the strike.
Meanwhile a peaceful rally organised on Wednesday by the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) marking Press Freedom Day outside Ofer military camp and prison, bordering Ramallah, in solidarity with hunger striking Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails was quickly quelled by Israeli forces.
The minute the journalists started to gather at the site, Israeli soldiers at the camp fired rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas canisters towards them, according to WAFA staff present at the rally. While no one was hurt, the journalists were not allowed to stay there much longer after soldiers threatened to use live fire against them if they do not leave the area. Two journalists were also briefly detained.
PJS head, Nasser Abu Baker, said while the journalists had wanted to peacefully express solidarity with the striking prisoners on Press Freedom Day, Israel denied them this basic right when it opened fire at them with the intention to force them to leave the area. While the world celebrates Press Freedom Day, Israel tries to silence the Palestinian journalists because they expose the crimes of the occupation and the suffering of the Palestinian people,’ he said, adding that Israel is the only country that detains journalists without charge or trial. There are more than 20 Palestinian journalists in Israeli custody, most held without charge or trial and some of them are on hunger strike.
• Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinian fishermen Wednesday morning, and also carried out a limited incursion into Palestinian lands in the besieged Gaza Strip, according to locals. Four Israeli bulldozers raided dozens of metres into the town of al-Fakhari east of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza on Wednesday morning and proceeded to level lands near the border fence, as drones flew overhead, witnesses said. Witnesses added that no shooting was reported.
Meanwhile, Israeli naval forces opened fire on Palestinian fishing boats off the coast of al-Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, according to witnesses who said no one was injured in the incident. An Israeli army spokesperson said they were not aware of either case. Israeli military incursions inside the besieged Gaza Strip and near the ‘buffer zone,’ which lies on both land and sea sides of Gaza, have long been a near-daily occurrence.
Palestinians who work near the ‘buffer zone’ often come under fire from Israeli military forces, as the authorities have not made clear the precise area of the designated zone. The practice has in effect destroyed much of the agricultural and fishing sector of the blockaded coastal enclave. The Israeli army also regularly detains and opens fire on unarmed Palestinian fishermen, shepherds, and farmers along the border areas if they approach the buffer zone.
Gazan fishermen, whose numbers are estimated to be around 4,000, have suffered from the near decade-long siege of the Gaza Strip, which limits their incursions to just six nautical miles into the sea in accordance with the ceasefire agreement signed with Palestinian factions in 2014.
• Nearly a dozen Palestinians have sustained gunshot wounds after Israeli military forces stormed a refugee camp in the southern part of the West Bank amid ongoing tensions between protesters and Israeli troops in the occupied Palestinian territories. Informed sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Arabic-language Safa news agency that Israeli troopers raided Arrub refugee camp, located 15 kilometres south of Bethlehem, on Wednesday, prompting skirmishes with local residents.
The Israeli forces fired live and rubber-coated steel bullets and used excessive amounts of tear gas to disperse the crowd. The sources added that three young Palestinian men were struck with live bullets, while seven others were hit with rubber bullets. The area was then covered with a cloud of smoke and dozens of protesters suffered from tear gas inhalation.
Meanwhile, unidentified armed men have fatally shot a municipal night guard in Kafr Qasim city, located about 20 kilometres east of Tel Aviv. Local sources identified the victim as 27-year-old Hamad Badair. More than 300 Palestinians have lost their lives at the hands of Israeli forces in the tensions since the beginning of October 2015.
The Tel Aviv regime has tried to change the demographic makeup of Jerusalem al-Quds over the past decades by constructing settlements, destroying historical sites and expelling the local Palestinian population. Palestinians say the Israeli measures are aimed at paving the way for the Judaisation of the city. The al-Aqsa Mosque compound is a flashpoint Islamic site, which is also holy to Jews. The mosque is Islam’s third holiest site after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.
• An Israeli military court started to hear appeals Wednesday morning regarding the case of Israeli soldier Elor Azarya, who was sentenced in February to 18 months in prison for the filmed, execution-style shooting of 21-year-old Abd al-Fattah al-Sharif.
Prior to the sentencing, the case had already been denounced as a ‘show trial’ for focusing on the case to distract from a wider culture of impunity for Israeli forces, as Azarya was charged with manslaughter for what was termed by rights groups as an ‘extrajudicial execution’ and by the victim’s family as ‘cold-blooded murder.’
Following the announcement of the 18-month sentence, the al-Sharif family said they were ‘not surprised’ about the lenient sentence – noting that the soldier received less prison time than a Palestinian child would for throwing stones.
Azarya’s defence team has appealed both the manslaughter conviction and the 18-month jail sentence for being too harsh, while the Israeli military prosecution has submitted an appeal to increase the sentence.
The argument behind the prosecution’s appeal was that Azarya’s sentence was not congruent with the ruling of the judges, who had given a detailed refutation of nearly every claim made by the defence team when they convicted him, and accepted the prosecution’s argument that the soldier committed an unjustified revenge killing.
Al-Sharif was shot and seriously wounded after allegedly stabbing another Israeli soldier, and after he was left bleeding on the ground for some ten minutes, Azarya shot him in the head, with a number of witnesses quoting him as saying ‘This dog is still alive’ and ‘This terrorist deserves to die’ before he pulled the trigger.
According to Israeli news site Ynet, Azarya’s appeal argued that the judges who sentenced him ignored ‘a plethora’ of evidence in his favour, and that the military’s investigation contained ‘biased’ witnesses that established the suspicion against him, as Israeli commanders at the scene of the shooting gave harsh testimonies against the young soldier, denouncing him for committing an unjustified killing.
Azarya’s attorney also reportedly submitted a request to the appeals court to receive investigation materials of 15 similar cases in order to present them as evidence that support Azarya’s innocence. Azarya was the only member of Israeli forces to be charged with killing a Palestinian in 2016 – when at least 109 Palestinians were shot and killed by Israeli forces and settlers – according to Human Rights Watch.
According to rights group Yesh Din, of the 186 criminal investigations opened by the Israeli army into suspected offenses against Palestinians in 2015, just four yielded indictments. The appeal process will begin with the first of two hearings in which the parties will present their cases, a second hearing will be held next week, and a third discussion will be scheduled if necessary, according to Ynet.