Editorial Note: The following news reports are summaries from original sources. They may also include corrections of Arabic names and political terminology. Comments are in parentheses.

Hana Shalabi Free at Last in Gaza After 50-Day of Hunger Strike in Israeli Occupation Government Prison

April 2, 2012

 

Shalabi arrives in Gaza

[ 01/04/2012 - 05:15 PM ]

GAZA, (PIC)--

Released Palestinian detainee Hana’a Shalabi arrived in the Gaza Strip on Sunday afternoon via the Beit Hanun (Erez) crossing.

Shalabi arrived to an official, popular welcome and was taken to Shifa hospital for a medical check-up after about 50 days of hunger strike in Israeli jails.

She said on arrival she was pleased to be in Gaza because “I am in my country and among my family”.

Shalabi was on hunger strike in protest against her administrative detention, without trial or charge. The Israeli occupation authority decided to free but deport her after her health condition seriously deteriorated due to the long hunger strike.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad: Banishing Shalabi a Zionist crime

[ 02/04/2012 - 08:56 AM ]

GAZA, (PIC)--

Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements have denounced the Israeli occupation authority (IOA) for banishing detainee Hana’a Shalabi to Gaza after 44 days of hunger strike.

Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, told the PIC on Sunday that the deportation was a crime, adding that Shalabi should be returned to her home and family in the West Bank.

He said that detaining Shalabi in the first place was a violation of the articles of the prisoners’ exchange deal between Hamas and Israel that stipulated among other things that all freed captives in the deal should not be re-arrested.

Barhoum said that the “Zionist enemy” was encouraged by the Arab and European silence to continue in its deportation crime against Palestinian prisoners.

The spokesman called on the Arab League to establish a committee in defense of Palestinian prisoners, and urged human rights organizations to adopt their case.

For his part, Khaled Al-Batesh, an Islamic Jihad spokesman in Gaza, told the PIC on Sunday that Shalabi’s exile was rejected, and violated international, humanitarian laws and norms.

He charged that the Israeli banishment of prisoners was a sinful policy and a mass punishment.

Meanwhile, Palestinian female prisoners in the Israeli Hasharon jail have complained of the administration’s refusal to remove monitoring cameras from their wards.

The Palestinian prisoner’s society in a press release on Sunday quoted those prisoners as saying that the administration also held Jewish female homicide convicts in a ward next to them with only a plastic door separating them. They feared that the next step would be bringing them together, and complained of their noise, which disturb them all the time.