Young Palestinian protesters hold portraits of Samer Issawi, a Palestinian prisoner who has been on a hunger strike for more than 200 days, during a solidarity sit-in outside the Red Cross offices in Jerusalem yesterday. Issawi is one of four prisoners who have been refusing food for months in protest at their being held by Israel, although two of them, Jaafar Ezzeddine and Tariq Qaadan, ended their hunger strike on February 27 pending a hearing on their case.
AFP/Ramallah
Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas’s top priority is to secure the release of more than 1,000 prisoners held by Israel, an official said yesterday ahead of a visit by US President Barack Obama.
“Abbas’s instructions, correspondence and political meetings aim at making concerted efforts to free 107 prisoners arrested before 1994,” Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said in a statement, referring to those jailed before the signing of the Oslo accords.
“This is in addition to the release of 1,000 other prisoners, which was agreed on in a deal between Abbas and former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, and of 15 who were re-arrested after the (Gilad) Shalit prisoner swap,” he said, referring to an Israeli soldier held by Hamas for more than five years.
Palestinian leaders are currently preparing for a top-level visit by Obama as part of a three-day tour that will begin in Jerusalem on Wednesday.
Obama is scheduled to hold talks with Abbas at the Palestinian leader’s political headquarters in Ramallah on March 21, then visit Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity the following day, Palestinian officials said yesterday.
Obama will be accompanied by Secretary of State John Kerry, who said in February he was intent on giving $700mn in aid to Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, $495mn of which has been blocked for months by Congress.
The Palestinian Authority is currently living through its worst financial crisis since its creation in 1994, caused by the non-delivery of aid promised by the US and Arab countries, as well as Israel’s blocking of monthly tax monies it collects on behalf of the PA.
