The Palestinian Prisoners' Hunger Strike

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Palestinian prisoners in Zionist prisons have declared a general, open-ended hunger strike, until their demands for improved prison and detention conditions are met.

This declaration coincided with Palestinian Prisoner Day, marked on April 17 of every year. This strike, in which all Palestinian detainees across the Palestinian political spectrum are participating, is not the first of its kind — it is a link in a chain of strikes Palestinians have waged over the years. Here we distinguish between a strike waged by individuals alone, without a response from the various Palestinian factions, and a general strike. There are Palestinians, administrative detainees especially, such as Sheikhs Khader Adnan and Mohammed Allan, who decided to wage an open-ended strike on their own individual responsibility, holding out in their strike for long periods and ultimately managing to reach a satisfactory outcome for themselves and for the Palestinian people as a whole.

The current strike is a general, comprehensive strike involving all prisoners, whether sentenced or under administrative detention. The prisoners have several demands of the occupation authorities, including: installing a public telephone in every prison to enable prisoners to communicate with their families, improving the conditions of family visits and committing to a visit every two weeks, and refraining entirely from banning visits as a punitive measure. Other demands include increasing the number of satellite channels detainees can watch, according to what they themselves deem appropriate, ending the policy of administrative detention and solitary confinement, and improving detainees’ medical conditions. Detainees demand prompt treatment for the sick, the release of those suffering disabilities, providing comfort during the transfer of detainees from one prison to another, or from the prison hospital to the prison where the detainee is held, and improving women’s medical conditions in a way suited to their circumstances. There are also academic requests, such as reinstating the option to take the general secondary school (Tawjihi) exam in prison, and enrolling in the Open University of Israel.

Will the detainees succeed in their endeavor? Palestinians have prior experience in this field, and have achieved important, notable accomplishments. They have carried out open-ended strikes, and martyrs have fallen inside the detention facilities. The prisoners’ movement has offered a great deal of sacrifice so that life inside the prisons might be bearable and consistent with international law.

The prisons were extremely harsh at the beginning of the Zionist occupation of the territories occupied in ‘67. For example, every two prisoners shared a single boiled egg for breakfast, and sometimes two prisoners were given a small plate of fava beans not even enough for a child, or a small spoonful of jam and four olives. A detainee had to wake early and arrange the blankets he used for sleeping, then sit on them while waiting for the count or roll call, and was not allowed to sleep on them during the day. Detainees had no bed or foam mattress to sleep on at night. This is not to mention the torture detainees were subjected to. Conditions were extremely harsh, and the Red Cross was unable to do anything about it.

Detainees decided to use their empty stomachs as a means of pressure with global resonance against the Zionist occupation and its repressive measures. Through the strikes, the quality and quantity of food improved, and international oversight, through the Red Cross, was established over what was provided to detainees. Prisoners managed to improve family visit conditions and their medical conditions. They obtained a wooden platform equipped with a thin mattress to sleep on, and achieved a breakthrough regarding hearing a news bulletin and listening to Umm Kulthum’s voice. It also became possible to extend the “fura” period (the daily time outside in the yard to stretch the legs and get air and sunlight). Eventually detainees obtained a television and began watching Israel’s channel and Amman’s channel. Health conditions inside the detention cells also improved radically. Detainees also managed to take the general secondary exam, and to bring in books for university studies. In other words, the history of the strikes shows that the battles of empty stomachs achieve accomplishments — not necessarily every demand, but achieving part of them serves the purpose temporarily, until the next strike.

The detainees are waging the battle, and we, outside detention, must support them, and the most important support we can offer relates to the international arena. The prisoners’ cases must be internationalized, and the various world media outlets must be mobilized to write reports and inform the peoples of the earth of the scale of injustice Israel practices against detainees, and of its explicit, clear violation of international covenants. We must then mobilize local public opinion across its full spectrum to support the prisoners’ cases, stand with them, stand with their families, and lend them strength. It is our duty to mobilize various institutions to serve the detainees and confront the occupation’s measures and criminal practices.

We must incite all Arabs to stop normalization with the Zionists, withdraw recognition of Israel, and mobilize energies to confront it. We bear a moral, national, and societal obligation to stand with the prisoners’ movement and take various measures that would put pressure on Israel to meet the demands. This is why it is necessary to mobilize our various media outlets, seminars, lectures, and political programs in service of this cause. What pressures Israel most is a prisoner exchange, and a strong popular movement that frightens it. This is in the factions’ hands.

From our experience, Israel will respond by taking measures against the detainees, such as transferring them to isolated prisons, raising the level of solitary confinement for the detainees’ leaders, or carrying out repeated searches of their cells, and so on. These measures will weigh heavily on the detainees, but Israel has no choice, in the face of the detainees’ persistence, but to respond. In the end, Israel will open the door to negotiation with the detainees and will meet a fair number of their demands.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “إضراب الأسرى الفلسطينيين” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.