IOF Impose Strict Curfew on Ramallah, Kill Palestinian Police Officer
Palestinian Detainees Go on Hunger Strike
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have escalated their military aggression against the Palestinian people, shot dead a
Palestinian police officer, imposed a strict siege and curfew on Ramallah and totally closed the cities of Jenin,
Tulkarem and Nablus, only two days ahead of a US-Palestinian-Israeli summit meeting in Aqaba.
The IOF shot dead the Palestinian police officer Nasser Abdulqader Bakr, 54, when their tanks shelled a security post
between Biet Lahya and Biet Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday.
The IOF troops also on Monday imposed a strict siege and curfew on the West Bank city of Ramallah, isolating completely
the actual Palestinian political capital from tens of towns and villages, and totally closed other West Bank cities, “in
the context of Israel’s collective punishment policy,” a Palestinian official spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added that the IOF have tightened their siege on the northern West Bank cites of Jenin, Tulkarem,
Qalqilya, Nablus, while continuing their reoccupation of the whole northern Gaza Strip, and in particular Biet Hanoun.
Meanwhile Palestinian Salem Sulaiman Al-Masdar, 57, died in a Gaza city hospital Monday of wounds sustained from IOF
gunfire on April 6, Palestinian medical sources announced.
These escalating military measures “refute all what has been declared by the Israeli official spokespersons on easing
the siege” imposed on Palestinians, the Palestinian official spokesperson said Monday.
The Israeli escalation also is an attempt to avoid implementing the so-called internationally-adopted and US-backed
“roadmap” peace plan, the spokesperson added, ahead of a US-Palestinian-Israeli summit meeting in the Jordanian port
city of Aqaba on Wednesday.
The Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last Thursday promised Palestinian premier Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), in their
second meeting in occupied Jerusalem, that Israel would ease the siege the IOF impose on reoccupied Palestinian
territories and would free some Palestinian detainees as a gesture of good will.
Sharon delivered none of his promises so far, except the release of the PLO executive committee member Tayseer Khalid,
who was detained in mid-February.
Khalid stressed to reporters, shortly after a brief meeting with President Yasser Arafat in Ramallah late Monday, the
importance of the detainees issue.
Sharon pledged Thursday, May 29, to Abu Mazen to set free Taisseer Khaled and Ahmed Jbara Abu El-Sukkar, detained since
1975.
The families of thousands of Palestinian detainees, in Israeli jails as well as in IOF detention camps in occupied
Palestinian territories, gathered Monday, June 2, in Gaza in the courtyard of the International Committee of the Red
Crescent to denounce Sharon’s decision to set free selectively a few of Palestinian detainees.
They called upon the Arab leaders participating in Sharm El-Sheikh summit Tuesday and the Palestinian delegates to the
Aqaba summit meeting with the Israeli and the US President George W. Bush to “set free all prisoners without exception”
and to “pay heed to the catastrophe befalling their sons.”
The detainees decided to go on a hunger strike Tuesday, June 3, to attract the attention of the leaders attending Sharm
El-Sheikh summit.