Israeli Maariv reported on Wednesday morning that the Israeli Prison Administration (IPA) has started a series of measures to increase pressure on the Palestinian detainees in an attempt to break their open-ended hunger strike. The new measures include depriving the detainees of education, reducing the number of TV channels permitted, and withholding certain types of food formerly allowed.
The IPA decided that the detainees can watch only ten satellite TV channels: four Israeli channels (1, 2, 10, and 33), two Russian channels, and four Arabic channels. The Qatar-based news agency, Al Jazeera, was taken off the list.
Earlier this week Israeli soldiers attacked several prisons, searched detainees’ rooms, caused injuries to a number of detainees, and fired gas bombs in Nafha and Asqalan prisons. Soldiers also moved detainees from Shatta to Megiddo prison. Several detainees were put in solitary confinement.
Palestinian political prisoners in all Israeli prisons are demanding better living conditions, adequate medical care, and an end to solitary confinement policies and other violations of international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention.
