Over 400 Palestinians Launch Hunger Strikes in Israeli Regime Prisons

Maan news cited Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) as saying on Thursday that 285 Hamas-affiliated prisoners held at the Eshel and Nafha prisons entered an open hunger strike on Thursday to protest suppressive measures by the Israeli Prison Service (IPS), while some 40 prisoners from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) were striking in solidarity with prisoner Bilal Kayid, who launched an open hunger strike since 53 days ago over his detention without trial, administrative detention. Hamas leader Abd al-Rahman al-Shadid said in a statement that over 300 of the movement's members in Israeli jails launched a hunger strike on Wednesday that would “continue until Israeli forces end the humiliation and oppression against them.”

Al-Shahid said that Hamas-affiliated prisoners were abused, beaten, and strip searched while being moved days prior to them joining the strike.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Prisoners Club said in a statement that 80 prisoners stopped eating on Friday, joining 325 who have been striking for the past two days at various prisons in Israeli regime and the occupied West Bank.

According to al-Shahid, the number of Hamas-affiliated hunger strikers is expected to rise as the protests continue, adding that tensions were high in various prisons where solidarity hunger strikes were taking place resulting in what he claimed was a targeting of Hamas-affiliated prisoners by the IPS.

The Israel Prisons Service said that during the week it had moved Hamas prisoners, searched cells and seized mobile phones, acting on "intelligence information about direction of terror from inside prisons".
 
A spokesperson for the prisons service told AFP that Hamas prisoners along with prisoners from leftist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) went on hunger stike in support of fellow prisoner Bilal Kayid.

Kayed was to be released in June after serving a 14-and-a-half-year sentence for activities in the PFLP.

Instead, Israeli authorities ordered that he remain in custody under the administrative detention law, which allows prisoners to be held without trial for renewable six-month periods.

Kayid, 35, is suffering from failing kidneys and has lost at least 30kg, Palestinian officials say.

Administrative detention is a sort of imprisonment without trial or charge that allows the Tel Aviv regime to incarcerate Palestinians for up to six months, extendable indefinitely.

The inhuman system is widely criticized by rights groups for the way it is used to hold people who have committed no offences, or whose sentences have already been served.

Of more than 7,500 Palestinians currently in Israeli jails, about 700 are being held under administrative detention, Palestinian rights groups say.