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Wings of Freedom

Toine van Teeffelen Bethlehem, Palestine 29 August 2004


Palestinian singer Ammar looks an introvert person. On the Lebanese Future station, where he is a finalist in the Idol-like competition “Superstar”, he sings his almost classical Arab songs in a beautiful melodramatic voice. He remains serious while he laughs. Surrounded by glitter and fashionable show presentators and a screaming teenager audience, he looks out of place. Asked by a jury member why he is so reserved and sad, he replies that he cannot sing gaily when his people in Palestine face so many difficulties, and he mentions the people dying at checkpoints. Art is resistance for him. Toine van Teeffelen reports from occupied Bethlehem. 

Red Cross visits detainees on hunger strike

27 August 2004


The International Committee of the Red Cross has continued to conduct its activities in Israeli places of detention during the current hunger strike by Palestinian security detainees. In particular, over the last 10 days the organization has begun a round of visits to all prisons housing detainees on strike, while maintaining close contact with their families and groups representing them. The ICRC plans to strengthen its team of medical doctors visiting places of detention, with a view to stepping up its monitoring of health conditions and access to medical care there. During the visits, the doctors will stress the possible health consequences of the strike. 

Thirteen UN agencies expressed concern about conditions Palestinian prisoners

27 August 2004


Thirteen United Nations institutions operating in the occupied Palestinian territory expressed concern today about the hunger strike that reportedly more than 2,900 Palestinian prisoners and detainees have joined. The UN’s Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Terje Roed-Larsen calls on the Israeli authorities to comply with its international obligations and to make every effort to find, with the prisoners, an appropriate resolution to the hunger strike. The UN agencies and offices remind Israel of its obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention and relevant international human rights instruments which provide for the protection of detainees and prisoners. 

Leading Israeli organizations call for an immediate change in policy towards the Palestinian political prisoners

27 August 2004


Prisoners on hunger strike are denied vital salts, medical treatment and access to their lawyers. In a press conference today at the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem, several Israeli Organizations provided an update on the prisoners, condition on the 12th day of the hunger strike and on the legal actions taken to stop the violation of their basic rights. Among the speakers were lawyers Abeer Baker and Lea Tsemel, Maher Talhami of Physicians for Human Rights, AIC’s Ahmad Jaradat and Hannah Friedman of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel. They call for an immediate change in policy towards the Palestinian political prisoners. 

Weekly report on human rights violations

26 August 2004


This week Israeli forces killed 6 Palestinian civilians, including a child and an elderly man. Israeli forces razed 60 donums of agricultural land in Wadi al-Salka and 45 donums in al-Moraq. Israeli forces demolished 17 homes in the Gaza Strip. Israel continues to impose a total siege on the occupied Palestinian territories and construction of Israel’s apartheid wall continues despite international consensus against the wall. Palestinian and Arab prisoners initiated a hunger strike in Israeli prisons with a call to improve conditions of their confinement, seeking respect for minimum standards for the treatment of prisoners. 

Israel uses UNRWA girls' school as detention center

25 August 2004


In the morning of 24 August, Israeli military forces broke into UNRWA’s girls’ school in Askar Refugee camp in the West Bank and proceeded to use the school as a detention and interrogation center for hundreds of male residents of the camp between the ages of 16 and 40. The Agency strongly protests this flagrant violation of the United Nations Privileges and Immunities. The occupation of Askar girl s’ school is not the first such abuse of UNRWA’s humanitarian installations in the West Bank or in the Gaza Strip. No less than 10 schools were occupied during Defensive Shield operation. In all these cases, UNRWA has also protested to the Israeli authorities, but without result. 

Yahoo! Sports makes Palestine's Olympians disappear

Ali Abunimah and Nigel Parry 26 August 2004


The Internet information service Yahoo! has omitted information about Palestine’s athletes competing in the 2004 Olympics at Athens. Yahoo! has extensive Olympics coverage, one of the features of which is a search engine that allows users to look up any athlete by name or to look up all the athletes representing a country — except that the athletes from Palestine are mysteriously missing. EI’s Ali Abunimah and Nigel Parry explain the problem and ask for action. 

Reality Check for "Palestinian Idol"

Charmaine Seitz 26 August 2004


While reality programming was the source of much Palestinian parlor discussion when the genre first hit Arab satellite television, critics didn’t get into the pulpit until Palestinian crooner Ammar Hassan made his way into the final rounds of Superstar, which allows viewers to register their preference for the Arab singer of the year. When Hassan became one of the 12 finalists, a Ramallah sheikh listed the distraction of satellite television among the ills plaguing the Palestinian cause. Hamas officials were more blunt, saying in a statement, “Our people are in need of heroes, resistance fighters and contributors to building the country and are not in need of singers, corruption mongers and advocates of immorality.” 

Local, regional solidarity with hunger strikers grows

26 August 2004


As Palestinian prisoners enter the 11th day of a hunger strike to protest abysmal Israeli prison conditions, Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, professional groups from other Arab countries, and Israeli activists have joined with the strikers in solidarity. Israeli authorities reacted to the strike with disciplinary measures and suspended several of the prisoners’ privileges such as confiscating television sets and radios, suspending newspaper deliveries and stopping visits. Over 200 Palestinian prisoners have died while in Israeli custody, due to torture, ill-treatment, deprivation of medical treatment, and neglect. 

Palestinian prisoner hunger strike continues, despite Israeli repression

Arjan El Fassed 26 August 2004


Over 2,000 Palestinian political prisoners are currently participating in a hunger strike to protest their detention conditions and treatment by Israeli prison authorities. These include demands for public phones, the removal of partitions that separate inmates from visiting family members, and a halt to strip searches. They are also demanding the right to be able to hold their children during visits. Israeli prison authorities have resorted to new measures to end the open hunger strike that entered its 11th day today. EI’s Arjan El Fassed reports.