GAZA, 1 September 2004 — A Palestinian militant group threatened yesterday to kill Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath for participating in a conference in Italy with his Israeli counterpart. The Jenin Martyrs Brigades said Shaath should have avoided all contact with Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom at a religious conference in northern Italy last week during a hunger strike by Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
The Brigades, the armed wing of the Popular Resistance Committees that band together a coalition of militants, said it decided to prevent the “traitor” Shaath from returning home to Gaza. “He will be sentenced to death if he enters. The decision cannot be rescinded,” the group said.
Mohammad Al-Waheidi, a spokesman for Shaath, said the Palestinian foreign minister and Shalom never held a one-on-one meeting during the gathering in Rimini, Italy. “Shalom was a guest there just like minister Shaath. There was a debate and minister Shaath explained the suffering of the striking prisoners and their right to better conditions and freedom,” Waheidi said.
Meanwhile, the Israeli Supreme Court yesterday rejected an appeal by Arab Israeli human rights groups to force prison authorities to provide Palestinian inmates on hunger strike with salt additives. Judges ruled that the medical facilities, which have been put on standby by the prison authorities, were sufficient and there was no need to give the hunger strikers the nutritional additives.
