Palestinians hope President Obama's second term will help bring change

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinians expressed hope Wednesday that President Obama’s second term will be more forthcoming than his first one when it comes to resolving their conflict with Israel.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was quick to congratulate Obama on his victory and expressed hope that he will help achieve peace in the Middle East.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said he hoped Obama's second term would see the implementation of a two-state solution. Palestinians also remain determined to become a nonmember state in the United Nations General Assembly, Erekat said.

Analyst Sam Bahour said he expects Obama will have more leverage and face less pressure from lobbying groups in dealing with issues such as conflicts in the Middle East.

"On the one hand, he is more knowledgeable of the issues, and on the other he has to deal with the changing politics in the region, particularly with the emergence of two new powers in the Middle East — Iran and Turkey — which means the U.S. cannot afford to leave a political vacuum that could be filled by either of these two powers," Bahour said.

Palestinians in general do not expect Obama to change his support of Israel, particularly in light of what Bahour described as "a Congress hijacked by the pro-Israel camp."

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Photo: President Obama meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington in March. Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press

Palestinian official criticizes U.S. position on U.N. recognition

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- A Palestinian official Friday criticized President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for opposing Palestinians' bid for statehood recognition in the United Nations, and failing to give the issue more attention in their speeches this week before the international body.

"By ignoring us, the Palestinian question is not going to go away," said Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Thursday at the U.N. General Assembly that consultations have begun with various nations on drafting a resolution that will be submitted before the end of the assembly's current session, calling for upgrading the status of the Palestinian territories from observer to non-member state.

The upgrade would allow the Palestinian Authority to join all U.N. organizations, but not to vote.

Ashrawi said no specific date has been set for a vote on the proposed resolution, but several nations have strongly suggested submitting it on Nov. 29, the U.N.-adopted International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. That is also is the anniversary of a 1947 U.N. resolution partitioning the region into Arab and Jewish states.

She said the U.S. was already working behind the scenes to discourage other nations from supporting the proposal, as it did a year ago when Palestinians attempted to gain full U.N. membership.

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Palestinian women protest recent cases of domestic violence

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Four recent cases of women slain allegedly at the hand of either a husband or father have prompted women and human rights groups to demand tougher Palestinian laws against domestic violence.

Several female activists marched through the streets of Bethlehem on Thursday demanding justice for women in a patriarchal and traditional society. They also demanded severe punishment for men who kill or batter a female family member.

Women carried placards saying: “No to murder, yes to life” and “Shame on us Palestinians who kill our women.”

The march, following previous protests this week, was prompted by a slaying Monday on a busy street in the West Bank city of Bethlehem. A 28-year-old woman was stabbed several times in the chest and her throat was slashed while people stood by and watched. She later died in a hospital.

Her 33-year-old husband is in custody, and police say they expect to file murder charges against him.

Palestinian shot to death at Israeli checkpoint near Jerusalem

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- A 46-year-old Palestinian was shot to death early Monday and three others were wounded when Israeli soldiers manning a checkpoint east of Jerusalem opened fire at a vehicle transporting West Bank workers to Israel, Palestinian and Israeli officials said.

Palestinian medical sources said three people in their 20s were brought to the Ramallah hospital with bullet wounds to the arms and legs. Their injuries were reported moderate.

Akram Badr, from the Ramallah area village of Betillo, died on his way to an Israeli hospital after he was shot in the chest.

An Israeli police spokeswoman said “border guards opened fire at a Palestinian vehicle that failed to stop when ordered to do so at al-Zayyem checkpoint east of Jerusalem at around 1 a.m.”

Passengers in the vehicle denied the Israeli statement, saying shots were fired at the car without warning and after the driver attempted to turn back before he had reached the checkpoint.

Palestinian Authority officials denounced the shooting. "This incident would not have happened if it was not for the fact that Israel occupies our land and has all these checkpoints,” Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said.

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Palestinian prisoner ends hunger strike after more than 100 days

RAMALLAH, West Bank – A Palestinian prisoner who had refused to eat for more than 100 days, demanding release from detention, is ending his hunger strike, according to an attorney and prison officials.

Attorney Jawad Boulus said Akram Rikhawi, 39, a resident of the Gaza Strip, told him he  decided to halt his strike after an Israeli prisons committee agreed to release him from detention Jan. 25, five months earlier than his scheduled release date.

A spokeswoman for the Israel Prisons Service would not confirm an agreement for Rikhawi’s early release, saying only that the Palestinian prisoner had ended his strike.

Rikhawi, a father of eight, was sentenced to nine years in prison following his arrest in June 2004 for his activities during the second Palestinian intifada.

Boulus said he believes the decision for early release was made in light of Rikhawi’s long hunger strike, which caused him serious deterioration in health.

Rikhawi stopped eating on April 12, demanding early release due to health problems. He suffers from asthma and other chronic illnesses and  said the Israeli prison clinic was not providing him with proper treatment and medication.

Three other Palestinian prisoners remain on hunger strike in Israeli jails.

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Photo: A Palestinian girl stands next to protesters holding posters showing Akram Rikhawi, right, and two other Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails refusing to eat, Mahmoud Sarsak, center, a former player with the Palestinian national football team, and Samer Al-Barq, left. The photo was taken during a June 9  demonstration in support of the prisoners in the West Bank town of Jenin.  Credit: Mohammed Ballas / AP 

Israel releases speaker of Palestinian parliament from detention

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Israeli authorities released a senior Hamas lawmaker Thursday after six months held under the controversial practice of administrative detention.

Aziz Dweik, speaker of the Palestinian parliament, was arrested Jan. 19 at a checkpoint as he was leaving Ramallah for his hometown of Hebron in the southern end of the West Bank.

Israel uses administrative detention to hold Palestinians in prison without charge or trial for up to six months, with the possibility of indefinite extensions. The practice is widely condemned by the international community.

Some of the more than 300 Palestinians held under the system recently participated in long hunger strikes to protest their detention, and some have won release.

Dweik, who is in his 60s, was elected to the Palestinian parliament in 2006 on a Hamas-backed ticket. The parliament largely stopped functioning when Hamas' forces drove loyalists of the Fatah movement out of the Gaza Strip in 2007.

On Thursday, members of his family and Hamas lawmakers and officials waited for him at an Israeli army checkpoint near Ramallah, where he was dropped off.

Dweik’s attorney, Fadi Qawasmi, who had negotiated a deal with the military prosecutor to allow the release of the speaker at the end of his term, said he believed Dweik was released because of his stature as speaker of the parliament.

“Pressure from parliament members around the world must have left an impact on the Israeli decision to release him,” he said.

Israel still holds 21 Palestinian lawmakers from the West Bank, almost all of them members of Hamas, under administrative detention.

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Photo: Senior Hamas member Aziz Dweik is embraced by a supporter Thursday  after his release from Israeli administrative detention near the West Bank city of Ramallah. Credit: Majdi Mohammed / Associated Press

Gazans allowed to visit kin held in Israel for first time in five years

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Nearly 50 people from the Gaza Strip on Monday were allowed to visit relatives held in Israeli jails for the first time in more than five years.

Israel had barred Gazans from visiting prisoners after Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was kidnapped in 2006 and held in Gaza. He was released last October in a prisoner exchange with Hamas, which controls the coastal strip, but the ban had continued.

Israel agreed to resume visitation rights for Gaza families after more than 1,600 Palestinian prisoners went on hunger strike in April demanding better prison conditions. One of their demands was to allow such visitations. The strike ended on May 14 with an agreement between the prisoners and the Israel Prisons Service.

The continued delay in starting family visits had caused prisoners to threaten to resume their hunger strike.

Israel allowed the first group of Gaza families into Israel to visit prisoners at Rimon Prison in the Negev desert on a trial basis. The International Committee of the Red Cross arranged the visits.

Abdul Nasser Ferwaneh, who heads a Gaza-based Palestinian prisoner’s advocacy group, said the family members selected for the trial visit gathered at the Red Cross office in Gaza City at 3 a.m. They were put on a bus and driven to Erez crossing into Israel.

The families were told not to bring children or anything for the prisoners. They were told not to bring food even for themselves to eat during a trip that started before dawn and that was going to take them to a prison some 140 miles away.

There are at least 475 prisoners from the Gaza Strip held in Israeli jails. Because the first family visits went without incident, Israel said it would allow another group of family members to visit 50 prisoners next week. The visits are scheduled to continue every week.

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Photo: A bus with relatives of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons leaves Erez border after crossing into Israel on Monday to visit the prisoners for the first time in five years. Credit: David Buimovitch / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images.

Detained Palestinian official falls to death in Ramallah

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- A Palestinian official being held for questioning at the military intelligence building in Ramallah fell to his death Sunday from the third floor in what security officials said was a suicide.

Palestinian human rights organizations demanded an investigation into the death, though they stopped short of accusing the Palestinian Authority of responsibility.

Osama Mansour, 49, had been held since mid-June on suspicion of corruption and abuse of position. He had been in charge of the land department at the attorney general’s office of the Palestinian Authority, responsible for making sure Palestinians did not sell land to Israelis. The Palestinian Authority does not allow such sales, which it treats as treason punishable in some cases with death.

Officials accused Mansour of using his post to buy land from Palestinians and then sell it to other Palestinians at a higher price while pocketing the difference.

Mansour, a former intelligence officer, was not kept in a cell and was allowed free movement inside the compound, said an official who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the situation. The death followed the decision to move Mansour to a jail after his case was turned over to the anti-corruption authority.

Palestinian Authority officials ordered an autopsy, though they maintained that there was no foul play in the death.

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Palestinian prisoner resumes hunger strike in Israel

RAMALLAH, West Bank –- A Palestinian inmate in an Israeli prison who had refused to eat for 71 days resumed his hunger strike Thursday, a prisoners' advocacy group said.

The Ramallah-based Addameer human rights group said Hasan Safadi, who has been held for a year under a procedure known as "administrative detention" that allows prisoners to be held indefinitely without charge or trial, had relaunched his hunger strike after his detention was renewed.

The group said he was immediately placed in solitary confinement in what it called "a blatant violation" of an agreement last month between the Israel Prison Service and 1,600 hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners.

A spokeswoman for the Israel Prison Service said she could not confirm the report, explaining that it takes a few days before it can be determined if a prisoner is actually on a hunger strike.

Under last month's deal, prisoners currently in administrative detention would either be formally charged or released at the end of their terms, which typically are about six months, both sides said at the time.

Safadi was arrested a year ago at his Nablus home and was immediately placed in administrative detention for six months, a term that was later renewed. He went on a hunger strike for 71 days demanding his release, but ended it after he received assurances that he would be released at the end of his second term.

Addameer accused the Israel Prison Service of not honoring the terms of its agreement with the prisoners because administrative detention has been renewed for about three dozen prisoners.

The IPS spokeswoman said it was made clear in the agreement that administrative detention would continue if there was justification.

Meanwhile, Mahmoud Sarsak, a member of the Palestinian national soccer team who has been held since 2009, ended his three-month hunger strike earlier this week after he was promised release July 10.

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Photo: Palestinian women chant slogans and hold pictures of Mahmoud Sarsak, who has been held by the Israelis since 2009, during a protest June 11 outside the International Committee of the Red Cross building in Gaza City. Credit: Hatem Moussa / Associated Press

Israel returns remains of 91 Palestinian fighters

RAMALLAH, West Bank –- Israel on Thursday returned the remains of 91 Palestinians it had been holding for many years in graves marked only by numbers.

The remains, released as a goodwill gesture toward Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, were of Palestinians who died in suicide attacks or in battle with Israeli forces.

Ninety-one coffins were handed over to the Palestinian Authority early Thursday for reburial; 79 were brought to Ramallah and the remainder to Gaza.

In Ramallah, families waited at the presidential headquarters where a military funeral was held.  Guards fired 21 bullets in the air as a tribute to the dead, whom Palestinians refer to as martyrs.

“Our martyrs are now physically with us after they were with us only in our minds and hearts,” Palestinian Authority  Secretary-General Tayyeb Abdul Rahim told the hundreds of families who waited to take their sons and daughters to be buried in their hometowns. Abbas attended the ceremony but did not say anything.

“I feel like I had just lost my son,” said Basima Hanani, 43, mother of Sayd Hanani, who blew himself up in Tel Aviv on Dec. 26, 2003. She remembers the date because it was his 18th birthday. “Even though eight years have passed, it feels today the same as the time when I was told my son had died,” she said.

She said she would bury her son's remains in their village, Beit Forik in the northern West Bank. “At least now he will be close to us and we can visit him whenever we want,” she said.

Older people fainted near coffins that had names of their children on them.

Most of the remains were those of young Palestinians killed in suicide attacks in Israel in the last 10 years or in battles with Israeli soldiers who had sought to arrest them. Others were of Palestinian fighters killed in cross-border attacks since the mid-1970s, most prominently bodies of seven who infiltrated from the sea and were killed when Israeli special forces attempted to rescue hostages held in a Tel Aviv hotel in 1975.

Palestinian groups who had filed legal action in Israel to force the release of the remains say they expect more to be released in the next few weeks. They say there are an additional 200 Palestinians still held in special cemeteries in Israel.

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Photo: Palestinian presidential guards carry flag-draped coffins containing the remains of  militants during an official ceremony in the West Bank town of Ramallah on Thursday. Credit: Atef Safadi / EPA