Next week will see an explosion in Israeli prisons, where hundreds of
Palestinian inmates have been on a hunger strike, Palestinian Authority
Prisoners Affairs Minister Issa Qaraqi said on Sunday.
Qaraqi urged the
UN General Assembly to hold an emergency meeting to discuss the case of the
striking prisoners.
“The situation inside the Israeli prisons is very
difficult,” he told a press conference in Ramallah. “This requires real and
serious political and legal action.”
Qaraqi warned that if any of the
prisoners are harmed as a result of the hunger strike, this would be a “curse in
the face of international justice.”
The PA minister accused the
government of seeking to inflict a “humanitarian disaster” on the prisoners by
continuing to ignore their demands.
Next week, thousands of prisoners
will join the hunger strike, and they will not stop until all their demands are
met, he said.
The prisoners are demanding, among other things, an end to
solitary confinement, administrative detentions and a series of punitive
measures that were imposed by the government in response to the abduction of IDF
tank gunner Gilad Schalit to the Gaza Strip.
In a letter smuggled out of
one of the prisons, leaders of the striking inmates called for a one-day general
strike in the Palestinian territories in solidarity with the
prisoners.
Meanwhile, Ahmad Saadat, the leader of the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine, was transferred to a hospital over the weekend
after a serious deterioration in his health, his family and lawyer said on
Sunday.
Saadat was moved to Ramle Prison hospital by the Prisons Service
after joining the hunger strike that began on April 17, following two
highprofile hunger strikes launched by Palestinian security prisoners that made
international headlines.
Saadat is serving a 30-year sentence for his
role in the assassination of tourism minister Rehavam Ze’evi in
2001.
Some 50 security prisoners in recent days joined the 1,200 inmates
who are on a hunger strike, according to the Prisons Service.
The
inmates, convicted for a range of terrorist offensives, have been separated from
the general population, though not from one another, a source from the Prisons
Service confirmed last week.