JERUSALEM: Israel has told the European Union and UN it can deport a Palestinian prisoner on a life-endangering long-term hunger strike to one of their member states, an Israeli official said yesterday.
But a lawyer for Samer Issawi, who has intermittently refused food for more than eight months, said his client strongly rejected the Israeli initiative, and an EU spokesman said no “official” proposal had been received.
Issawi, 33, was first arrested in 2002 and sentenced to 26 years for military activities on behalf of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
He was released by Israel under a prisoner swap deal in October 2011, but rearrested last July for violating the terms of the agreement by travelling to the West Bank from east Jerusalem.
clashes in west bank
Meanwhile, Scores of Palestinian youths clashed with Israeli soldiers for a second day in the occupied West Bank, after locals accused Jewish settlers of beating a man with steel pipes.
Youths heaved rocks at Israeli army jeeps as smoke from blazing tyres mixed with tear gas a few hundred metres from the red-rooftopped villas of the Israeli settlement of Ofra. An Israeli army spokesperson described the alleged beating that led to the disturbances as a “clash between Israeli and Palestinian civilians” and said it was investigating.
Israelis from an outpost of cabins between the Ofra settlement and the Palestinian village of Silwad beat 60-year-old former judge Ahmad Al Zir as he was tending his land on Thursday, locals said.
“They were hitting him again and again on the head, cursing him and telling him to shut up,” said Mahmoud Hussein, a relative and an eyewitness of the alleged attack. Village youths pursued the Israelis to the encampment and burned down one of their improvised homes. Israeli soldiers were dispatched to the scene late Thursday, firing at the Palestinians and hitting two protesters with live bullets, including one in the chest, medics said.
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have been stalled since 2010 due in large part to disputes over settlement construction. US President Barack Obama visited Israeli and Palestinian leaders last month in an attempt to get negotiations going again, followed by Secretary of State John Kerry this week, although neither man presented any new initiative. Agencies
