Hunger-striking Palestinian politictal prisoners have written a letter to President Mahmoud Abbas, demanding he seek the UN Security Council’s mediation to save their lives, as Israeli authorities prepare to pass a law which threatens to force-feed them regardless of medical or legal ethics.
According to Al Ray Palestinian Media Agency, Prisoner Ministry lawyer Kareem Ajwa said, on Tuesday, that Palestinian detainees held in Israeli prisons, now on hunger strike for 62 days, need urgent international interference to end their suffering.
The letter expresses prisoners’ fears the Israeli government’s indifference to their lives and health will result in their death, noting that some have fallen unconscious while others have started to bleed.
Head of the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, Qadora Fares, recently confirmed to the PNN that prisoners engaged in this extended hunger strike are currently in a very bad and serious situation.
He said that several lawyers have visited their clients in Israeli hospitals, in checking prisoner health, and that they are working hard to solve the problem.
The letter to Abbas added that Israeli authorities have exploited the issue of the three missing Israelis in order to justify their brutal treatment of the prisoners.
They are calling on Palestinian leadership and all political parties to move, at all levels, to curb the Israeli occupation’s crimes against humanity and to put an end to the arbitrary policies, including Administrative Detention, in which prisoners are held for indefinite lengths of time without charge or trial.
Under a 2012 agreement, 2,000 Palestinian prisoners ended their hunger strike with promises from Israel to end solitary confinement, improve living conditions for prisoners, to provide proper medical care and to increase family visits.
In a fashion increasingly typical for Israel, the regime has once again failed to live up to its own end of the bargain.
