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Palestinian Authority Releases Zubaidi's Son after Clashes in Jenin Camp

Palestinian and Fatah movement glags flutter during a solidarity march with prisoners in Israeli prisons. (AFP)
Palestinian and Fatah movement glags flutter during a solidarity march with prisoners in Israeli prisons. (AFP)
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Palestinian Authority Releases Zubaidi's Son after Clashes in Jenin Camp

Palestinian and Fatah movement glags flutter during a solidarity march with prisoners in Israeli prisons. (AFP)
Palestinian and Fatah movement glags flutter during a solidarity march with prisoners in Israeli prisons. (AFP)

The Palestinian Authority (PA) released at dawn on Saturday Mohammad al-Zubaidi, son of prisoner and leading Fatah member Zakaria, just hours after detaining him along with two other people in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank.

The arrest sparked violent clashes in Jenin and the refugee camp, including heavy gunfire at the headquarters of security forces.

Zakaria was the former commander of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, the military wing of the Fatah movement in Jenin. He made headlines after escaping from Gilboa prison through a tunnel he dug with five other inmates last September before being re-arrested.

Mohammad was arrested after being attacked by members of the Palestinian police, sparking outrage in the Jenin camp and an air of rebellion against the PA.

This is not the first time that clashes erupt between gunmen and PA security forces.

The PA has repeatedly tried to launch campaigns to restore the Palestinian security services' control over the camp and contain the proliferation of weapons, as it did in other areas.

General Political Commissioner and spokesman for the security services, Talal Dwaikat vowed that the security establishment will follow up, through an investigation committee, on any illegal behavior by the security forces.

Commenting on the developments in Jenin, Dwaikat said people who violated the law will be held accountable so that civil peace and the safety of the citizens is maintained.

At the same time, he rejected the dangerous actions committed by gunmen against the Palestinian security forces, whom he said sought to avoid causalities among the people.

Such acts of violence only serve the "enemies of our people," he warned.

Dwaikat stressed that the Jenin Governorate, with all its security, organizational and popular components, is united against Israeli plans to harm the people and the Palestinian national project.

He praised Jenin governor, Akram Rajoub who gave immediate orders to release Zubaidi in honor of Zakaria and his history of struggle.

Israel's Haaretz newspaper said PA officials in Ramallah worked with field activists in Jenin to restore calm in the camp.

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In Besieged Sudan’s El-Fasher, Neighbors Improvise First Aid for Wounded

FILE - A Sudanese evacuee carries her son as they leave the USNS Brunswick at Jeddah Port, Saudi Arabia, May 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)
FILE - A Sudanese evacuee carries her son as they leave the USNS Brunswick at Jeddah Port, Saudi Arabia, May 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)
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In Besieged Sudan’s El-Fasher, Neighbors Improvise First Aid for Wounded

FILE - A Sudanese evacuee carries her son as they leave the USNS Brunswick at Jeddah Port, Saudi Arabia, May 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)
FILE - A Sudanese evacuee carries her son as they leave the USNS Brunswick at Jeddah Port, Saudi Arabia, May 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)

For a week, eight-year-old Mohamed has suffered the pain of shrapnel stuck in his arm. But he is one of the lucky ones in Sudan’s western city El-Fasher, which is under paramilitary attack.
“One of our neighbors used to be a nurse. She helped us stop the bleeding,” Mohamed’s father, Issa Said, 27, told AFP via satellite connection under a total communications blackout.
Like an estimated one million more people trapped in the city under a year-long siege by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Said cannot get to a hospital for emergency care.
With only the most meagre supplies remaining in El-Fasher, his family is among those whose only medical help has come from neighbors and family members who improvise.

In its quest to seize the North Darfur state capital — the only major Darfur city it has not conquered during two years of war with Sudan’s army — the RSF has launched attack after attack, which have been repelled by army and allied forces.

Even if people were to brave the streets, the Saudi Hospital is the only partially functioning one now, according to a medical source there, and even that has come under repeated attack.
Mohamed, an aid coordinator who fled to El-Fasher after getting shot in the thigh during an RSF attack days ago on the nearby famine-hit Zamzam displacement camp, estimates hundreds of injured civilians are trapped in the city.
According to aid sources, hundreds of thousands have fled Zamzam for the city, which is already on the brink of mass starvation according to a UN-backed assessment.
Yet the people of El-Fasher have “opened their homes to the wounded,” Mohamed told AFP, requesting to be identified by his first name for safety.
“If you have the money, you send someone to buy clean gauze or painkillers if they can find any, but you have to make do with what you have,” said Mohamed, whose leg wound meant he had to be carried the 15 kilometers from Zamzam to the city, a journey that took hours.

In crowded living rooms and kitchens, civilians with barely any medical training cobble together emergency first aid, using household items and local medicinal plants to treat burns, gunshot wounds and shrapnel injuries.
Another victim, Mohamed Abakar, 29, said he was fetching water for his family when a bullet pierced his leg.
The limb immediately broke underneath him, and a neighbor dragged him into his home, fashioning him a splint out of a few pieces of wood and cloth.
“Even if it heals my broken leg, the bullet is still inside,” Abakar told AFP, also by satellite link.

By Monday, the RSF’s recent attacks on El-Fasher and surrounding displacement camps had killed more than 400 people, according to the UN.
At least 825,000 children are trapped in “hell on Earth” in the city and its environs, the UN children’s agency UNICEF has warned.
The people of El-Fasher have suffered a year of RSF siege in a city the Sudanese military has also bombed from the air.
Residents have taken to hiding from the shelling in makeshift bunkers, which are often just hastily dug holes topped with bags of sand.

But not everyone makes it in time.

On Wednesday, a shell broke through Hanaa Hamad’s home, shrapnel tearing apart her husband’s abdomen before they could scramble to safety.
“A neighbor and I treated him as best we could. We disinfected the wound with table salt and we managed to stop the bleeding,” the 34-year-old mother of four told AFP.

But by morning, he had succumbed to his injuries, too severe for his wife and neighbor to handle.