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Vowing to resist from behind Israeli bars
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RAMALLAH,
August 16 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Palestinian Chief
Judge Taysir Rajab Al-Tamimi and Archbishop Atallah Hana, the
spokesman for the Orthodox Church in Al-Quds (occupied Jerusalem),
joined Monday, August 16, Palestinian prisoners inside Israeli jails
in their open-ended hunger strike in protest at human rights
violations and their appalling conditions.
Sheikh
Tamimi said he and Father Hana decided to go on the “empty
stomach” strike to voice their heartfelt support for the “fair”
Palestinian cause and the uphill struggle of thousands of Palestinian
prisoners, the Palestinian official news agency WAFA reported.
Tamimi
said they will not break their strike until it “pays off”, calling
for a nationwide strike to get their voice heard worldwide.
Some
1,550 of the 3,800 inmates inside detention centers run by the Israeli
prison service began
their strike Sunday, August 15, while others held in military-run
prisons were also refusing their food although exact figures were not
available.
They
want to be given mandatory visiting rights as well as an end to
“humiliating” body searches and the removal of glass barriers in
visitation rooms.
The
president of the Palestinian prisoners' association, Issa Qaraqea,
told Agence France-Presse (AFP) Monday that the jailed Fatah leader
Marwan Barghuthi was among the prisoners who were taking part in the
fast.
Barghuthi,
who was handed
five life terms by an Israeli
court June 6, is being kept in solitary confinement at Beersheva
prison in southern Israel.
Solidarity
Qaraqea
further said that the hunger strikers were refusing to drink in
protest at the measures being taken by the prison authorities to break
the strike.
Hundreds
of Palestinians started Monday a march in the West Bank in support of
the prisoners while shop workers were observing a strike in the
southern West Bank city of Al-Khalil (Hebron) in solidarity.
They
urged the international community to take an immediate action against
the Israeli government and stop the incessant Israeli aggressions.
Hundreds
others observed a strike before the headquarters of the International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Al-Khalil.
The
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said Sunday its
detained secretary general Ahmad Sadat and fellowmen in a Jericho
prison would go on a hunger strike Wednesday, August 18.
'Israeli
Planned Barbecues'
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A Palestinian boy with his hands symbolically chained in front pictures of prisoners, attends a solidarity rally in Gaza
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Continuing
their careless and provocative policies, Israeli prison officers set
up Monday barbecues to tempt Palestinian prisoners into abandoning
their strike and breaking their will.
The
occupation officials were hoping that the psychological warfare
tactics would derail the protest by thousands of prisoners.
Reports
said that barbecues had been set up in the prison courtyards, extra
bread and cakes were being cooked in the kitchens, while prison guards
have been instructed to eat in front of inmates, reported AFP.
The
Israeli government said Saturday, August 14, it did not care if the
detainees starved to death, imposing even more restrictive measures on
the security detainees.
“As
far as I'm concerned they can strike for a day, a month, until death.
We will ward off this strike and it will be as if it never
happened,” Internal Security Minister Tzahi Hanegbi told reporters.
Ofer
Lefler, a Prisons Authority spokesman, told Reuters privileges such as
cigarettes, sweets and television were taken away from the detainees
after they began the strike, which he described as a
“disturbance”.
He
said if a detainee became too emaciated, “an ethical committee”
would decide whether to begin force feeding.
More
than 8,000 Palestinians are detained in Israel, some are held with no
charges leveled or terms set.
The
Washington Post reported June 16 that the accounts of physical
abuse of Iraqis by American soldiers at Abu
Ghraib prison outside
Baghdad are similar to the Israeli army techniques in torturing
Palestinian detainees.
It
cited cases of Palestinian detainees painfully tortured by their
Israeli interrogators and placed in stress postures similar to those
imposed on Iraqi detainees.
