Palestinian Prisoners Enter in Open Ended Hunger Strike

Hundreds of Palestinian community members and supporters participated in a full-day hunger strike and encampment in Burbank, Illinois, on May 11, 2017, in support of 1,800 Palestinian prisoners who have entered more than four weeks of an open-ended hunger strike in Israeli prisons. At a 4 PM press conference, an official solidarity statement was read on behalf of U.S. Congressman Danny Davis. The Palestinian prisoners currently are only able to consume salt and water and have been limited to regular family visits, medical care and access to education.
Hundreds of Palestinian community members and supporters participated in a full-day hunger strike and encampment in Burbank, Illinois, on May 11, 2017, in support of 1,800 Palestinian prisoners who have entered more than four weeks of an open-ended hunger strike in Israeli prisons. At a 4 PM press conference, an official solidarity statement was read on behalf of U.S. Congressman Danny Davis. The Palestinian prisoners currently are only able to consume salt and water and have been limited to regular family visits, medical care and access to education.

Palestinian Prisoners Enter in Open Ended Hunger Strike

By Christopher Shuttlesworth

Eighteen hundred Palestinian prisoners have entered more than four weeks of an open-ended hunger strike in Israeli prisons, according to a US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) press release. Hatem

Abudayyeh, who is the co-founder and coordinating committee member of the USPCN, said the Palestinian prisoners’ basic, humanitarian demands include regular family visits, an end to solitary confinement, an end to

administrative detention, the strengthening of medical care and access to education.

Abudayyeh said the medical professionals explained that soon the 1,800 Palestinian prisoners will have difficulty with sitting and standing up due to the hunger strike, which he says is getting closer to the urgent, crisis side of

things.

“All they have been consuming is salt and water,” Abudayyeh said. “So it’s getting to the point where it is going to be really dangerous and it’s going to affect people’s health very, very soon and very, very quickly.”

Abudayyeh explained that the country is currently in the middle of a National Liberation Movement, which has resulted in strikes, protests and violent resistance that is legal under international law. He said the majority of the prisoners are only in prison because they are organizers against the Israeli occupation.

According to uspcn.org, “May 15, 2017 marked the 69th anniversary of the Nakba, which the ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and lands.” The article also, states that this particular day “marked 69 years of resistance to Israeli colonization and occupation and

to British and U.S. imperialism. Generations of Palestinians have refused to concede this key demand of the national liberation movement and collective Right of Return. Sixty-nine years later, Palestinians all over the world, who

were expelled as well as their descendants, maintain that they will return to their original homes and lands.”

Abudayyeh said hunger strikes happen in National Liberation Movements all the time but this scale of 1,800 prisoners is very uncommon.

“The Palestinian people feel like they are political prisoners and they feel like they are fighting and struggling against illegal, military occupation,” he said.

The Israel government now realizes that it is losing the public relations war in the international arena, as well as its grip on the masses of Palestinian people living under apartheid or under the subservient Palestinian Authority,”

according to uspcn.org. “This reality has pushed the politics of Israel further and further to the right, to become the borderline fascist government that we see today.”

Abudayyeh stated that the Israeli government is also, unwilling to negotiate with the Palestinian prisoner’s leadership to consider some of their demands. Congressman Danny Davis said the Israeli government must begin to

consider the prisoner’s demands in order for proper justice to be met in the country.

“A key piece of the process of finding a way to peace and justice in the region is securing the freedom of all Palestinian political prisoners,” Davis said.

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