Settlers attack Palestinian car near Jenin

JENIN (Ma’an) -- A Palestinian teenager sustained bruises after Israeli settlers pelted his car with stones near the site of the former Israeli settlement of Homesh, which was evacuated in 2005.

One of the car's passengers, Kamal Abu Awwad, said that he and some friends were driving from Nablus to Jenin when they saw a man, who they assumed to be a hitchhiker, waiting by the roadside near the evacuated Homesh settlement.

As they approached the man began shouting at them and five armed settlers emerged and began throwing stones at the car, Awwad told Ma'an.

Basim Mousa Al-Khatib was hit in the head with a stone.

“If we had stopped, we would have been killed. We heard them loading their guns which they pointed at us. It was really a narrow escape,” Awwad said.

Al-Khatib was taken to a public hospital in Jenin where medics said that his injury was a superficial wound.

A recent report by the Palestinian Authority found that settler violence against Palestinians had increased 'dramatically' in June 2011.

Annual figures compiled by Israeli rights group Yesh Din have repeatedly shown that nine out of 10 police investigations about settler offenses fail to lead to a prosecution.

Family of Jenin prisoner appeal for urgent medical treatment

JENIN, (PIC)-- Family members of Palestinian prisoner Ahmed Abul Rub have said that their son held in the Israeli jail of Askalan was in very poor health condition and could die any moment.

Sabria Abul Rub, the prisoner’s mother, said in a press release that her son, 33, could no longer walk on his feet and that he was walking with the help of crutches while he was in very good health when he was first detained and did not complain of any disease.

She said that his condition started with pain that developed after the Israeli prison service refused to offer him proper treatment until he reached the stage of semi paralysis.

Despite the seriousness of his disease, as doctors said, the IPS refused to release him and was content with giving him sedatives, the mother said, noting that her son, who is serving a 15-year sentence, suffered a lot in solitary confinement imposed on him in Askalan jail.