5,200 Palestinian prisoners join administrative prisoners' hunger strike

Palestinians currently being held in Israeli jails as administrative detainees have been on continuous hunger strike for 29 days now, and thousands of other prisoners are joining them in a one-day mass hunger strike on Thursday to express their solidarity.

All Palestinian prisoners are denied reasonable due process due to the fact that they are tried in Israeli military courts. However, those held through the practice of administrative detention are never tried at all, but detained indefinitely without any formal charges ever brought against them.

According to the Palestine 48 news website, the Prisoners and Freed Prisoners’ Minister in Ramallah, Issa Qaraqe, announced on Wednesday that 5,200 prisoners in the different Israeli jails are joining the hunger strike on Thursday in solidarity with the administrative detainees and to put more pressure on the Israeli occupation authorities to respond immediately to the prisoners’ demands.

As the strike has now reached a critical situation, Qaraqe also called for urgent political action to save the hunger strikers.

“In light of their dangerous health situation, with 20 hunger strikers admitted to prison hospitals after failing unconscious and many others placed in solitary confinement, all the while the occupation continues its intransigence, an urgent political intervention is needed,” Qaraqe said.

Qaraqe revealed that the Palestinian Authority has been reaching out to certain countries for help and these contacts could prove effective for putting pressure on the Israeli occupation to fulfil the demands of the prisoners and to stop committing crimes against them.

He reiterated that the administrative prisoners are kept illegally and arbitrarily in the Israeli jails. He said that their detention is a violation of article 71 of the fourth Geneva Convention, which stipulates that an occupation court cannot sentence anyone unless they have stood before a legal court.

The occupation authorities have detained more than 800,000 Palestinians since 1967, with 5,224 currently being held in Israeli prisons, according to the PLO.