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Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org for Monday July 2, 2012.
Palestinian hunger-striking prisoner at risk of dying, meanwhile the Israeli military continues to bombard the Gaza Strip, these stories and more, coming up, stay tuned.
Diabetic Palestinian prisoner Akram Rikhawi has been on a hunger strike for 83 days and is at imminent risk of dying. According to the World Medical Association, in most cases death occurs between 42nd and 72nd days of hunger strike.
Rikhawi suffers from various chronic conditions: diabetes, asthma, osteoporosis, kidney problems, deterioration of his eye lenses, high cholesterol, and immune deficiency.
Due to these pre-existing conditions Rikhawi’s hunger strike has been even harder on his body. He was already in fragile condition a month ago. Now he is in a coma and his condition is deteriorating fast.
Akram Rikhawi went on hunger strike on April 12 when he was not granted early release on the basis of his medical condition and social circumstances. Rikhawi has 13 children, five of them are adopted.
In other news, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue building and expanding settlements in the West Bank. The Israeli Premier’s statements came during the Israeli Knesset session on Monday.
The Palestinian Authority on the other hand has repeatedly said that it will not resume direct talks with the Israelis until Israel unconditionally stops all settlements activities.
Israel has claimed it had frozen settlement activities for ten months in 2010, however, several Israeli and International human rights organizations indicated that Israel did not stick to the alleged freeze and settlement activities continued as normal during the period in question.
The Gaza Strip was besieged by airstrikes from the Israeli military once again Monday morning. Conflicting reports from Israeli and Palestinians sources leave the total number killed or injured unknown.
The densely populated Gaza Strip witnessed yet another day of airstrikes and bombings from the Israeli military and air force on Monday. Israeli military sources report that the attacks were launched against Palestinian fighters known to be in a neighborhood south of Gaza City.
Israeli military sources have claimed that the airstrikes were a success but it has not released the names of its targets. As is often the case the Israeli military claims that all victims of its attacks are militants – either including women, children and other non-participants as so-called ‘militants’ or ignoring them entirely.
Regardless of who was targeted, and for what reason, the grim reality on the ground is that dozens of Palestinians have been killed or injured by Israeli attacks in the past three weeks. Many of these casualties are undoubtedly women, children, and other civilians. The youngest, two-year old Hadeel Haddad, was killed during the evening of June 19th.
That’s all from IMEMC News. This was the Monday July 02nd daily roundup of news from the Occupied Palestinian Territories. For more news and updates please visit our website at www.imemc.org. Today’s report has been brought to you by Husam Qassis and me George Rishmawi
