Deputy chairman of Hamas Political Bureau Ismail Haniya commended the steadfastness of Palestinian prisoner Bilal Kayed, who had been on hunger strike for fifty days protesting his detention in occupation prisons without trial or charges. Political and diplomatic pressure from the Arab states is needed, he said, to put an end to Israeli “humiliation” of Palestinians prisoners.
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The hunger strikers are also protesting against harsh prison conditions, including harassment by prison wardens, solitary confinement, the seizure of personal belongings, and isolating different prisoners, Palestinian authorities told AFP.
INFOGRAPHIC: How many Palestinians are imprisoned by Israel? .
On Friday 80 prisoners refused to eat, along with over 300 that have been on hunger strike for the last two days around Israel and parts of the Palestinian occupied territories.
It said that hunger strikers were being fined 600 shekels, about $158, each and forbidden visits for two months.
“These techniques of torture and ill-treatment are used not only as means to intimidate Palestinian women detainees but also as tools to humiliate Palestinian women and coerce them into giving confessions”, the group stated, adding that “while Israel’s prison authorities and military forces recruit women soldiers to detain, and accompany women prisoners during transfers, the female soldiers responsible for these procedures are no less violent towards Palestinian detainees than their male counterparts”. In 2015 alone, Israeli forces detained 106 Palestinian women and girls, which according to the group represented a 70 percent increase compared to detention numbers in 2013.
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”. There are 262 Hamas prisoners and 93 prisoners from the PFLP estimated to be now on strike.
Kayed was to be released in June after serving a 14-and-a-half-year sentence for activities in the PFLP, labelled a terrorist organisation by Israel, the European Union and the US.
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. Palestinian officials say that he has lost at least 60 pounds and suffering from failing kidneys.
Of more than 7,500 Palestinians now in Israeli jails, around 700 are being held under administrative detention, Palestinian rights groups say.
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Palestinians have regularly gone on hunger strike in protest at their detention.
