Palestinian prisoners’ affairs minister, Wasfi Qabaha, paid a visit Wednesday to several prominent Palestinians who are in their second week of a hunger strike protesting the unjust western blockade on the Palestinian people.
The minister appreciated the nationalist sense of the strikers and their effort in breaking the siege.
Palestinian well-known writer Adnan Al-Sabah, the first to start the hunger strike, praised the minister for the visit, considering it as a step that "reflects the Palestinian government’s high sense of responsibility towards the Palestinian people and desire to keep contact with the pulse of the Palestinian street".
Sabah had previously addressed Kofi Annan, UN secretary-general, representatives of the veto-wielding countries, and heads of the international civil societies, saying, "Peace be upon you from the land that you and I believe is the land of peace; but you have turned it, with your unexplainable silence, into a land of war, ruin, and starvation for no mistake on the part of its original inhabitants (the Palestinian people) except that they provided a shelter for those (the Jews) who escaped you and your governments’ extermination streak".
"How much do we have to pay more for the bread of our children? The PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] had done its part in recognizing the Hebrew state 15 years ago, but instead of forcing Israel to reciprocate the step and recognize legal rights of the Palestinian people, you shared with it the slaughter of the Palestinian people", Sabah added in his letter.
He concluded by telling the concerned parties, "As a human being, I decided to die ahead of children of my country, simply because I couldn’t watch a child of my people die of hunger before my eyes. Thus, I hold you responsible for pushing a people to die of starvation, and that is the Palestinian people".
At least five Palestinians have joined Sabah on his hunger strike, which is open-ended, to call on the international community to lift the "starvation siege" on Palestine.
