An Israeli Arab member of parliament today claimed that Israeli soldiers desecrated the Koran, the Islamic holy book, while searching Palestinian security prisoners.

Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin has threatened to begin a hunger strike if he is not granted conjugal visits with the woman he says he married by proxy, a spokesman for the Israeli Prisons Authority said today.

About 1,600 Palestinian prisoners began a hunger strike today to protest at conditions in Israeli jails – despite a warning by Israel’s public security minister said they could “starve to death” before he agrees to ease restrictions.