By MOHAMMED MAR'I ARAB NEWS
Published: Apr 2, 2010 01:49 Updated: Apr 2, 2010 02:17
RAMALLAH: Palestinian prisoners in an Israeli jail went on a hunger strike on Thursday to protest Israeli atrocities. The Palestinian Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees said that prisoners at Ofer jail returned their meals to the Israeli authorities.
It was not immediately clear how many of the 1,000 prisoners in Ofer were on hunger strike.
The Palestinian ministry warned that prisoners in other Israeli jails would also go on hunger strike during April if the Israeli authorities failed to meet their demands. The hunger strikers want more access to education, telephones, satellite channels besides end to strip searches and solitary confinement. They also want improvement in the quality of food and increase in the number of family visits.
The ministry said that the families of prisoners would stop visiting them during April as a token of protest.
“The families in West Bank cities took the decision in coordination with their jailed relatives to protest the Israeli measures of preventing hundreds of families from visiting their loved ones in prisons. This is also to express solidarity with the Gaza Strip families who have been barred from visiting their relatives during the last three years,” the ministry said.
“Depriving mothers, wives and sons from visiting the prisoners is gross violation of international laws and treaties,” it said.
According to the ministry, Israeli guards strip search women family members before they are allowed to see their relatives in prisons.
According to Palestinian official figures, Israel holds more than 8,000 Palestinian prisoners from the West Bank and Gaza in its 25 jails and detention camps. Most of them have been in detention since the launch of the Palestinian intifada in Sept. 2000.
Meanwhile, Israeli military said it would not file any charges in the death of a Palestinian protester last year.
Thirty-one-year-old Bassem Abu Rahmeh was killed when a tear gas canister fired by troops hit him in the chest during a protest last April against Israel’s West Bank separation barrier.
The army claimed Abu Rahmen was in a group of people throwing rocks at troops. But video footage showed the protesters shouting at soldiers, not throwing anything.
In another development, an Israeli military judge on Thursday ordered the release of 10 Palestinians, including a senior Fatah official, detained at a protest march through a West Bank checkpoint, supporters said.
A spokesman for the group who attended the military trial said the demonstrators, including senior Fatah leader Abbas Zaki, were ordered to be freed without charges or conditions.
“The judge criticized the police and said very clearly that this was a peaceful protest and that no violence was used except by the police and the military,” the spokesman, Jonathan Pollak, said.
The military confirmed the 10 were ordered released.
The arrests were made on Sunday after about 150 demonstrators protesting against Israeli restrictions on travel from the West Bank walked through a lightly manned checkpoint outside Jerusalem with a donkey and a horse.
Israeli security forces halted the group a few hundred meters past the checkpoint but Pollak said the arrests were made after the protesters had delivered speeches and started walking back to the West Bank.
The 10 were detained along with five Israelis, who were released later that day.
A protest on Wednesday outside the military prison where the 10 were being held turned violent, with Israeli border police firing tear gas and rubber bullets at Palestinian youths hurling stones.
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