Audio Link After Text
Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, for Tuesday, August 18th, 2015.
Hunger striking political detainee recover from coma and resume his hunger strike meanwhile Israeli troops demolish homes in the Jordan valley. These stories, and more, coming up, stay tuned.
Palestinian lawyer/political prisoner Mohammed ‘Allan entered his 64th day of hunger strike Tuesday after waking from a four-day coma. ‘Allan pledged to continue the open-ended strike until death if necessary.
250 Palestinians who are being held without charges by Israeli authorities in a prison camp in the Negev desert have decided to join the open-ended hunger strike.
Allan, a 31-year old Palestinian lawyer, slipped into a coma four days ago, and Israeli authorities administered vitamins and fluids.
The prisoners who joined the hunger strike on Tuesday represent all of the prisoners who are being held without charges in the Negev camp.
The hunger strikers are demanding an end to the Israeli practice of administrative detention, in which Palestinians are held without charges in harsh conditions, with no access to legal counsel, and often denied family visitation as well.
Also on Tuesday, eight Palestinian civilians were kidnapped by Israeli troops during pre-dawn invasions targeting West Bank communities.
According to Palestinian sources invasions and kidnappings were reported in Hebron city, southern West Bank, the central West Bank city of Ramallah and near by Jerusalem.
Elsewhere, Israeli troops demolished on Tuesday 12 tents owned by Palestinian Bedwens in Al Fasayel area in the Jordan Valley. Another four structures were demolished by the army in the nearby Al Ma’aber area.
The army said that the structures were built without the needed permission. The Jordan valley is marked as areas C that is under total Israeli occupation control.
Permissions to build homes or tent are never given to Palestinian landowners and water is mainly taken to nearby illegal Israeli settlements that the army allows to keep being built and enlarged.
In the past two week Israeli army bulldozers demolished 18 Palestinian owned homes and farmhouses in the Jordan valley. Palestinian sources said that last year Israel leveled more than 1000 Palestinian owned structure in the Jordan valley.
And that’s all for today from the IMEMC News; this was the Monday, Tuesday, August 18th, 2015 news round-up 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 George Rishmawi and Ghassan Bannoura.
