RAMALLAH, June 26, 2011 (WAFA) – Minister of Detainees and Ex-Detainees, Issa Qaraqe, called to expel Israel from the United Nations for violating UN Charter and International Law.

Qaraqe called to address the prisoners issue politically and not

sentimentally. He called to take effective measures to protect

Palestinian prisoners from the Israeli ‘slow-death’ policy against them.

He considered the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to aggravate the conditions of prisoners as a “dangerous precedent” and an official political decision that violates all international charters and conventions.

Qaraqe called on human rights organizations to intervene immediately to end Israeli prisons’ administration measures against prisoners.

He participated in a protest in front of the International Red

Cross headquarter in Ramallah, organized by the Palestinian Prisoner’s Club (PPC), in solidarity with the sick Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and against the Israeli deliberate medical negligence of their health conditions.

Protesters called on the international community and UN to intervene to release sick prisoners and provide them with proper treatment.

Mother of Palestinian prisoner Bilal Badreh, 27, who is one of the protesters, expressed her anger over the deterioration of her son’s health condition causing Badreh to suffer from kidney failure among other illnesses.

Badreh, currently in Asqalan prison, was arrested in 2002, and spent five years in solitary confinement.

More than 1500 sick Palestinians suffer from different illnesses;

75 of them are physically and psychologically disabled, while 18

have cancer and tumors, 25 are permanent ‘residents’ at al-Ramla prison hospital, which receives roughly 100 medical cases per month from different prisons and detention camps.

R.Q./F.R.