A Palestinian woman who has refused food for the past month to protest her imprisonment by Israel without formal charges is in grave danger of dying, a medical rights group said on Tuesday.
Hana Shalabi lost 14kg, her muscles are wasting and she is in excruciating pain, said Ran Cohen of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, which has provided her a doctor. She has taken only water since her arrest on Feb. 16.
“We are worried. Her physician has demanded she be transferred to hospital,” Cohen said.
Israel Prison Service spokeswoman Sivan Weizman said that for the time being, Shalabi is being monitored at a prison clinic.
Shalabi, 30, a supporter of the militant Islamic Jihad group, is being held without formal charges, an Israeli system called “administrative detention.” She is scheduled to be released in another three months.
Israeli military officials say they use administrative detention to hold people who pose an immediate risk to the country’s security, or when displaying incriminating evidence would reveal intelligence-gathering networks.
More than 300 of about 6,000 Palestinians currently held by Israel on security-related charges are in administrative detention. Rights activists say international law allows this practice only in exceptional cases and that Israel blatantly violates these restrictions.
Prison authorities say 20 Palestinian detainees have launched hunger strikes in support of Shalabi in the past two weeks. Earlier this year, administrative detainee Khader Adnan staged a hunger strike for 66 days. He ended the protest after reaching a deal with the Israeli authorities to free him next month.
Also on Tuesday, a UN agency urged Israel to crack down on settler takeovers of springs on Palestinian land in the West Bank and to restore water sources to their original owners.
Israeli settlers have used intimidation and fencing to block Palestinians from using 30 springs in the West Bank, according to a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. In another 26 cases, settlers have made attempts to take the springs over, including renaming them in Hebrew, running frequent tours and building infrastructure.
In other developments, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and US President Barack Obama spoke by telephone for the first time in six months.
In Monday’s conversation, Abbas assured Obama that a letter he plans to send to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the coming days would not contain an ultimatum, an Abbas aide said.
Abbas has said the letter would sum up peace efforts, remind Israel of its peace obligations and lay out the requirements for renewing negotiations, including an Israeli settlement freeze. Netanyahu has refused to halt construction on occupied lands the Palestinians want for a state.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese