A general strike was declared in the occupied West Bank and demonstrations were held on Tuesday in major Palestinian cities following the cancer-related death of a Palestinian fighter imprisoned for 20 years in Israel.
In the morning, the Israeli prison services announced the death in a hospital near Tel Aviv of Nasser Abu Hamid, aged 50, imprisoned since 2002 and sentenced to life imprisonment by Israeli justice for “murders and attempted murdersduring the second Intifada (2000-2005).
SEE ALSO – Where is Israel going? Find the Club Le Figaro International
Gatherings have multiplied
In Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron and Bethlehem, businesses closed after the announcement of the death of this figure of Fatah, the secular movement of the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. School children have returned to their homes in many villages and the gatherings have multiplied, AFP journalists have noted.
Nasser Abu Hamid was diagnosed last year with lung cancer, for which he was being treated by the Israeli health system. But Palestinian officials on Tuesday accused Israel of “negligencein care.
Read alsoPalestinian teenager killed in West Bank
“I mourn on behalf of myself, our government and all the Palestinian people, martyr leader Nasser Abu Hamid, who died as a result of the prison administration’s policy of deliberate medical negligenceIsraeli Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said. This death is aserious crime” against the “inmates” and the “palestinian people“, supported Hamas, a rival Islamist movement of Fatah and in power in the Gaza Strip, where a demonstration was also held.
“We thank God for choosing a martyr among us. We also thank God that we were able to see him to say goodbye. It was a difficult moment (…) I said to him: son, may God protect you“, told AFP his mother, Latifa Abou Hamid.
“It’s not a court”
Five other brothers from the Abu Hamid family have been imprisoned in Israel for their role in the violence. And a sixth was killed in 1994 during clashes with the Israeli army. Nasser Abou Hamid was the first of Marwane Barghouthi’s former collaborators to be called to the bar during the 2003 trial of this Fatah tenor, still imprisoned in Israel for his role in various anti-Israeli attacks during the second Intifada.
“It is not a court. I am not ready to participate in this. I will only speak in front of an international tribunal“, he had then declared, in Hebrew.
SEE ALSO – Israel: “There is an asymmetry between the Arabs who wish to get closer to the Jews and the Jews who do not”