Mouin Rabbani

Shireen Abu Akleh, a veteran al-Jazeera journalist, was a fixture on Palestinian and Arab TV screens for more than two decades. Intrepid, sympathetic, intelligent and trustworthy, she had reported on developments in the occupied territories since the late 1990s. She was shot dead by the Israeli military in the early morning of 11 May. There was shock, grief and outrage throughout Palestine and the Middle East. Israel has killed more than forty-five journalists since 2000, but the case of Abu Akleh has taken the practice to an entirely new level.

Administrative detention is another British practice that Israel has adopted, imposing indefinitely renewable terms of imprisonment without charge or trial. Khader Adnan died in prison on 2 May, aged 45, after an 87-day hunger strike. A former spokesman for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement from the town of Arraba in the northern West Bank, Adnan had been repeatedly held in administrative detention since 1999. Despite vilifying him as a terrorist, Israel never charged him with involvement in military activities.