200 Arabs in Jerusalem protest hunger-strike deaths

Associated Press

Transcribed from the clipping

JERUSALEM — Two hundred Palestinian Arabs demonstrated in East Jerusalem yesterday to protest the death of a second convicted Arab terrorist in a prison hunger strike. Demonstrators at the Red Cross building blamed prison authorities for the deaths and claimed “mass killings” were taking place in Israeli jails.

Antagonism between Moslem nations and the Israelis has intensified as Israel's parliament moves toward declaring the city, including the annexed Arab sector, capital of Israel. Turkey protested the action and in Alexandria yesterday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Kamal Hassan Aly told reporters Egypt is watching the Knesset's actions “with extreme care and caution.”

Kassam Mahmoud Halawe, 28, convicted of a hand grenade attack in Gaza in 1971 which killed two Arabs and wounded six others, was hospitalized Tuesday with two other prisoners who became ill during a hunger strike in an Israeli prison. He died yesterday.

Autopsies showed that he and Ali Muhammed Shehade Jaabari died from lung infections, which developed when liquid nutriment they were being force-fed entered their lungs. Jaabari, who died Wednesday, was also serving a life sentence for a 1968 murder.

Carrying placards reading “Let us stop this mass killing,” friends and family of the prisoners waited for a Red Cross delegation to return from Nafha, the prison for Arab terrorists, where 48 prisoners continue their hunger strike. “They told us they are dying day by day and decided they would rather die quickly,” said Badiya Nassan Malabed, mother of two Nafha convicts.

Fifteen women, family members of the Arab prisoners, later said they were joining the strike and that more were likely to join later. On Wednesday, police broke up similar demonstrations in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank of the Jordan River. The Interior Ministry appointed a special committee yesterday to investigate the deaths and handling of the hunger strike.

Attorney Leah Tsemel returned to the Red Cross from Nafha, near Beersheba, and said: “The prisoners asked me to tell you that they have no political demands, only humanitarian demands.” The hunger strike began July 14 to protest conditions that allegedly single out Arab security prisoners for worse treatment.

But prison officials charge that the strike is organized from outside the jail for political purposes. “The prison authorities killed them. They are totally responsible for their deaths,” said Tsemel.

She described the living conditions as 10 prisoners to a small cell used for eating and sleeping, and said the Arabs sleep on mattresses on the floor and receive no medical or dental care. In Alexandria, Egypt, after a Cabinet meeting, Aly spoke to reporters about the Knesset bill changing the status of Jerusalem.

“This is just the first reading,” he said, “but we are looking into the decision very seriously, and awaiting the outcome with anxiety.” The bill received initial approval by a 65-12 majority in the Knesset on Wednesday. It goes to committee for final preparations for enactment. Egypt immediately protested the bill, saying it was “illegal.”

The measure angered Egyptian President Anwar Sadat when it was first proposed in May, and led him to suspend for two months the Egyptian-Israeli-American talks on Palestinian autonomy in the occupied territories. Israel annexed the Arab sector after capturing it in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. It did not annex the other Arab lands it has occupied and administered since then.

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Cite this item

"200 Arabs in Jerusalem protest hunger-strike deaths," Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 25 July 1980. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1980-013. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1980-013