JERUSALEM — Palestinian officials on Sunday called for an international investigation into the death of a 30-year-old prisoner in an Israeli jail, saying the man was tortured during interrogation, as thousands of Palestinian prisoners went on a one-day hunger strike in protest.
“Israel is responsible for what happened,” Issa Qaraqa, the Palestinian minister for prisoner affairs, said at a news conference in Ramallah, in the West Bank.
“I accuse the State of Israel of subjecting him to tough physical and psychological pressure,” Mr. Qaraqa said. “He was subjected to a heavy and severe torture.”
Israeli authorities said the prisoner, Arafat Jaradat, died of a heart attack. An autopsy was scheduled for Sunday, with a Palestinian forensic specialist and a relative of Mr. Jaradat scheduled to attend.
Amid intensifying demonstrations in the West Bank that some officials and analysts see as the stirrings of a third intifada, or uprising, Israel on Sunday transferred to the Palestinian Authority $100 million in tax revenue that it had been withholding. Isaac Molho, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s special envoy, also sent a message to the Palestinian leadership that Israeli officials described as an “unequivocal demand to restore quiet on the ground.”
Israel has refused Palestinian requests to release four prisoners whe have been on long-term hunger strike or 123 people who have been detained since before the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. “Some of these people are accused of very heinous crimes,” a senior Israeli official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter with the news media. “They’re saying that every Palestinian hunger striker should have a get-out-of-jail-free card. You can’t have a system like that. It’s not sustainable.”
After days of demonstrations in solidarity with the hunger strikers that have included clashes with Israeli soldiers and settlers, hundreds of Palestinians turned out Sunday in several cities and villages to protest Saturday’s death of Mr. Jaradat, who relatives said worked in a gas station and was the father of a 4-year-old girl and 2-year-old boy. Demonstrators in Gaza waved the flags of Palestinian political factions along with banners reading “Tortured” and “Their freedom is our responsibility.”
“We will resort to all means to liberate the prisoners,” said Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, the militant Islamist party that rules the Gaza Strip.
Atallah Abu al-Sabah, Hamas’s minister of prisoner affairs, criticized Palestinian leaders in the West Bank for their handling of the issue, and called for kidnapping Israeli soldiers “instead of pursuing playful negotiations that brought nothing to the Palestinian cause.”
Mr. Jaradat was arrested last Monday for throwing stones at Israeli cars near a West Bank settlement during November’s conflict between Israel and the Gaza Strip. Palestinian officials said he admitted the stone-throwing but denied using Molotov cocktails. He also confessed to tossing rocks in a 2006 incident. Officials said his detention was extended 12 days at a hearing on Thursday, during which his lawyer said Mr. Jaradat complained of severe pain in his back and neck that he attributed to his interrogation.
“When he was under interrogation, the interrogator told him, ‘Say goodbye to your kids,’ ” Mr. Jaradat’s uncle, Musa, said at the Ramallah news conference. Musa Jaradat said that his nephew’s father and brothers had all spent time in Israeli jails, and that before his detention, Arafat Jaradat had sought to join the Palestinian security force.
The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, issued a statement expressing “deep sorrow and shock” over Mr. Jaradat’s death, saying there was a “need to promptly disclose the true reasons that led to his martyrdom.”
Palestinians Demand Inquiry Into Detainee’s Death in Israel
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Palestinians Demand Inquiry Into Detainee’s Death in Israel
