by Khaled Abu Toameh • September 1, 2015 at 5:00 am
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Most of the Palestinian camps in Lebanon and Syria have long served as large weapons warehouses controlled by various militias belonging to different groups. This has been happening while the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which is formally in charge of the refugee camps, continues to look the other way.
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The 120,000 Palestinians living in Ain al-Hilweh are "unfortunate" because they are not being targeted by Israel. Otherwise, there would have been an international outcry and the UN Security Council would have held an emergency session to condemn Israel and call for an immediate cessation of hostilities. Instead, Ain al-Hilweh may soon fall into the hands of Al-Qaeda and Islamic State terrorists.
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The Syrian Army has also been dropping barrel bombs on the camp almost on a weekly basis. But because Israel cannot be blamed, Palestinians killing Palestinians is not something that the international media and community are interested in.
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Instead of admitting their responsibility for turning the camps into military bases, Palestinian leaders often prefer to blame others, preferably Israel, for the plight of their people.
 Smoke from explosions rises from Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon, Aug. 25, 2015. (Image source: Arab Tomorrow video screenshot) |
Palestinians are once again paying a heavy price for allowing terror groups and armed gangs to operate freely inside their communities. But this is not happening in a refugee camp in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. Rather, it is taking place in Lebanon, one of three Arab countries that host hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
This explains why the international media and human rights organizations have shown little interest in what is happening inside the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, Ain al-Hilweh.
For the past two weeks, dozens of Palestinian families from Ain al-Hilweh have fled their homes after fierce clashes that erupted between Fatah militiamen and terrorists belonging to a radical Islamist gang affiliated with Al-Qaeda and Islamic State.
The UN Security Council has clearly not heard of the fighting in Ain al-Hilweh. That is why it has not even issued a statement expressing "concern" over the plight of the Palestinians in the camp.
by Paul Leslie • September 1, 2015 at 4:00 am
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The European Court of Human Rights ruled that in situations where hunger strikes are organized as a means of pressuring the relevant authorities into releasing detainees, a refusal to comply with the demands of the hunger-strikers does not constitute a violation of Article 2 -- provided that there is a regulatory system in place guaranteeing all the necessary measures are taken to monitor and manage these situations, including unrestricted access to appropriate medical care.
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Israel has the benefit of the European Court rulings to refer to, as well as the provisions many fellow democracies have on their statute books concerning the membership of proscribed groups and the criteria for proscribing them -- in the case of less liberal democracies like France, they are more wide-ranging than those applied in Israel.
 Force-feeding, then and now. |
Israel has a dilemma. Is it better when confronted with hunger-striking "activists" belonging to terror groups to let them starve themselves to death or not to let them starve themselves to death, even if it means feeding them by force.
In Britain, for instance, decisions about force-feeding in prisons have in general been governed by legislation that relates to the medical profession -- and in particular those laws which pertain to mental health and mental incapacity -- as well as being influenced by considerations linked to the criminalisation of aiding and abetting suicide.
There has been nothing on the statute book specifically relating to hunger-striking detainees with the exception of the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Act. This was adopted in 1913 by way of response to a specific set of historical circumstances. Suffragettes who were imprisoned for public order offenses and related illegal activities had embarked on hunger strikes.
