Hamas prisoners stage hunger strike

More than half of the remaining detainees at Guantánamo Bay are now on a hunger strike, US military officials confirmed Sunday. Of the 166 inmates at the controversial detention camp in Cuba, 84 are refusing all food as a protest against their indefinite confinement and conditions at the centre.

A Palestinian man who died under disputed circumstances in Israeli custody was given a hero’s funeral Monday, as thousands thronged his gravesite and Palestinian police fired a 21-gun salute. Palestinian officials, citing an autopsy, said Arafat Jaradat was tortured during Israeli interrogation. Israeli officials said more tests are needed to determine the cause of death, and Israel’s public security minister said he would allow an international expert to review the autopsy results.

At least 7,500 Palestinians were being held in Israeli jails and detention facilities at the end of 2009, the Palestinian Authority said on Thursday.The detainees include 34 women, 310 children and 304 people being held under administrative detention without trial, according to a report published by the prisoners affairs ministry.The detainees also include 17 MPs, most of them from the Islamist Hamas movement, two former ministers, and a number of political leaders.

An Israeli ministerial committee on Sunday approved a draft bill seeking to toughen the conditions under which Hamas prisoners are held in response to the stalemate over kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit."The ministerial committee on legislation has approved the proposed law which would deny benefits and certain conditions for Hamas prisoners in Israeli jails," the committee said in a statement.The aim of the draft bill is to give the government a way to pressure Hamas to accept a prisoner exchange agreement under which Shalit would be released, the statement said.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said on Tuesday that Israel was responsible for the delay in releasing an Israeli soldier held in the Gaza Strip for more than three years.Meshaal also insisted that Sergeant Gilad Shalit will only be freed when Israel agrees to conditions by the Islamist Palestinian movement, which is demanding that he be swapped for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners."Shalit will only be exchanged when the Israelis have accepted Hamas's demands," the visiting Meshaal, who lives in exile in Damascus, told a televised news conference in Tehran.

Israel is refusing to free a group of Palestinian prisoners demanded by Hamas in exchange for a captured Israeli soldier, officials close to the talks on a deal said on Wednesday.They said Israel objected to releasing a group of Palestinian prisoners serving life terms or long sentences in exchange for Gilad Shalit who is being held by militants in Gaza, ruled by the Islamist movement Hamas.One official close to the indirect negotiations said reports of an imminent prisoner exchange were "premature."

An Israeli minister said on Tuesday that a deal with the Islamist Hamas movement to swap a Gaza-held soldier in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners was "very close.""I think that we are very close to a deal on an exchange," Industry Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer told army radio from Turkey, where he is on a visit."There will be a high price to pay, but I think the government will approve it," he said. "This deal will prove to all the mothers of Israel that we are not ready to abandon a single soldier."

Secretary of State John Kerry worked Monday to corral Israeli and Palestinian leaders into a new and ambitious peace process that includes reviving parts of a long-dormant plan embraced by the Arab world a decade ago, officials said. The 2002 initiative that Kerry wants to revive parts of would have provided Israel recognition throughout the Arab world in exchange for a pullout from territory conquered in 1967.