Far-right gangs attacked Arab and Jewish protesters on Tuesday, August 9, outside an Israeli hospital where a Palestinian prisoner is on hunger strike. Police reported that they made arrests on both sides.
The hunger striker, Bilal Kayed, 35, has refused food for nearly two month to protest his administrative detention by Israel. When Kayed concluded more than 14 years of imprisonment on June 13, instead being released, Israel placed him under administrative detention, the practice regularly used by Israel to hold detainees for renewable six-month periods without charges being filed or being brought to trial. Last week Kayed’s health suddenly deteriorated, causing prison officials to transfer him to Barzilai hospital in the southern city of Ashkelon where he is handcuffed to his bed.
Protestors demonstrating solidarity with Bilal Kayed outside Barzilai hospital in Ashkelon, Tuesday, August 9. (Photo: Ma’an)
The Israeli NGO Physicians for Human Rights has reported that Kayed’s vision is failing, he has difficulty standing, and doctors have warned he could be at risk of suffering a stroke. Palestinian officials have added that Kayed is also suffering from impaired kidney function. At the initiative of the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, Arab and Jewish supporters of Kayed picketed outside Barzilai hospital on Tuesday, carrying placards reading “Administrative detention is not legal.” Protestors included Joint List MKs and the Head of the High Follow-Up Committee and former Hadash MK Mohammad Barakeh.
Far-right Jews, including members of the racist party Otzma Yehudit (“Jewish Power,” formerly Kach) and the terrorist, “anti-assimilation” group Lehava (“Flame”) shouted “Death to terrorists,” as they staged a counter-demonstration and attacked the protesters. The two sides exchanged blows. When police intervened, the right-wingers hurled rocks at officers. Police said they arrested seven Jews and three Arabs suspected of public disorder, assaulting police and interfering with the police in the performance of their duty. In a statement issued by the Joint List, a spokesperson noted that three Arab protestors were detained despite far-right Jewish protestors’ having thrown rocks at them.
According to the Ma’an News Agency, the Palestinian hunger-striking prisoner Omar Nazzal told a Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) lawyer on Tuesday that he was being treated brutally by the Israel Prison Service and that officials at Israel’s Ofer prison threatened to force feed him when he was transferred back there following a court session on Monday.
Nazzal, 53, reportedly told the PPS lawyer who visited him in prison that he had been held for hours in a van used for transporting prisoners until he nearly suffocated. Nazzal added that he would continue with his hunger strike, first launched on August 4, to both protest his own administrative detention and in support of Bilal Kayed. Nazzal, a member of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, was detained by Israeli occupation forces in April and placed in administrative detention.
Related:
