Terrorist prisoner with leukemia dies; Arabs try to whip up riots (updates)

We've seen many times that it only takes a small event to capture the imagination of the so-called "Arab street." We've also seen that Arab leaders will try to manipulate the people to act in ways that are politically expedient for them.

Such a confluence may be happening now:

Palestinian prisoner Hasan Turabi, 22, from a Nablus-area village died Tuesday morning at Afula Medical Center in northern Israel, according to local Palestinian sources.

Sources from the village of Sarra in the northern West Bank told Ma'an that the Israeli prison service officially notified Turabi’s family of his death.

Turabi, according to lawyer Hiba Masalha of the Palestinian Authority ministry of prisoners affairs, was suffering from leukemia. She warned recently that he was in real danger after a blood vessel burst.

She added that Turabi was vomiting blood and was moved to the intensive care unit where medics found that he had blood clots in the neck, the chest and the abdomen.

Israeli forces had transferred Turabi from Megiddo prison to Afula Medical Center for medical treatment.

Palestinian Authority minister of prisoners' affairs Issa Qaraqe responded to the report saying that Israeli prison service is responsible for the death of Turabi and accusing them of "negligence."

Qaraqe said that the negligence had started at Megiddo prison, point out that ten days before Turabi was transferred to Afula hospital, he had severe bleeding and started to vomit blood.

"Prison medics treated the case recklessly and did not give him any medicine until he collapsed and lost consciousness on March 16, 2013."

At that point, added Qaraqe, the Israeli prison service released Turabi and transferred him to Afula Medical Center where he fell as a "martyr."

Qaraqe described the case as a new "war crime" committed against Palestinian prisoners.

So the official PA position is that a prisoner who died after his blood vessels burst is a victim of a "war crime."

But Islamic Jihad, the group that Turabi was a member of, has no less than nine articles about Turabi on the front page of its Palestine Today newspaper. They are also calling him a "martyr" due to "medical negligence." They say that there was a riot at Megiddo Prison when the prisoners there heard about his death, and that many prisoners were injured. They report that Hamas is demanding that negotiations between Israel and the PA be stopped because of this. Prisoners declared a hunger strike. Doctors who never saw Turabi are being interviewed so they can assure the Arab world that he died from "medical negligence."  The last video of Turabi in the hospital was released. The Department of Prisoners Affairs announced that their lawyers will boycott all court cases today in protest.

One article actually quotes Turabi's [Israeli] doctor as saying that they have no idea why his body is shutting down - they took biopsies of his liver, spleen and esophagus; he wasn't sure if the blood vessel ruptures were a leftover side effect of his leukemia or of the medicines he took to treat it or something else. That article shows that the hospital was trying very hard to cure him!

This is all only a few hours after Turabi died. Clearly some Arab leaders want this to snowball into an international incident, and so far none of them are calling for calm.

His funeral might be the spark that some people have been hoping for to start a new terror war.

UPDATE: Turabi had thrown a Molotov cocktail at an IDF patrol a year ago.

Ma'an Arabic is referring to him as a "martyr." His body was handed over to his family.