Palestinian prisoners stage strike over conditions in Israel
MORE than 1,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons joined in a hunger strike on Monday, demanding better conditions in an unusually large protest led by Marwan Barghouti, the most prominent prisoner and a figure often seen as a future Palestinian leader.
Later on Monday, there were unconfirmed reports by both Israeli and Palestinian news outlets that Barghouti had been moved from his usual prison, Hadarim, near Haifa, and placed in solitary confinement at another prison.
The reports said his offences were the strike and the act of smuggling out of prison an essay that he wrote, which was published as an op-ed article on Sunday in the New York Times.
The essay asserted that “Israel has established a dual legal regime, a form of judicial apartheid, that provides virtual impunity for Israelis who commit crimes against Palestinians, while criminalizing Palestinian presence and resistance.”
“We will not surrender to it,” he wrote.
Israeli prison officials could not be reached for comment on Monday night.
It was unclear whether the strike could be sustained to the point of forcing concessions from the Israeli authorities, but experts said it nonetheless had the potential to stir passions among Palestinians.
Protests erupted on Monday in support of the prisoners in the occupied West Bank and in Gaza, growing in size during the day.
“Israel is taking it seriously simply because of the possible consequences,” said Ghassan Khatib, a professor at Birzeit University and a former Pal- estinian official. “The issue of prisoners is very emotional.”
The strike also comes at a difficult time for the Palestinian Authority, whose leader, Mahmoud Abbas, is ageing and unpopular; potential rivals are increasingly showing an interest in succeeding him.
Polls suggest that Barghouti, 57, is the most popular choice to replace Abbas, 82, even though he is serving five life sentences after he was convicted of being a leader of the second intifada and of directing attacks that led to the killings of Israelis.
Starting on Sunday, many of the more than 5,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons declared that they were on a hunger strike.
The prisoners’ demands include more family visits, an end to solitary confinement, better health care and greater access to education. Qadura Fares, the director of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, a nongovern- mental organisation, said the prisoners would not end the hunger strike until their demands had been met.
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, called the demonstrations a “peaceful expression of opposing occupation”. In an interview on Monday with the Times’s editorial board, Mansour also said he had spoken by telephone with Barghouti’s wife.
“We hope this strike will be a short strike because nobody wants prisoners to have additional suffering,” Mansour quoted her as saying.
“We hope the Israeli occupying authority will start negotiating with them and make the duration short,” Mansour said. “But, of course, that remains to be seen.”
Although Barghouti belongs to Abbas’s Fatah party, and most of the strikers are Fatah members, its rival Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, said that it supported the strike and that some of its members would take part.
Israeli officials said they did not negotiate with prisoners. The Israeli prison service said that hunger strikes were illegal and that participants would be disciplined. “Strikes and protests are illegal activities and will face unwavering penalisation,” the service said in a statement.