The Palestinian security prisoners’ decision to suspend the hunger strike that was supposed to begin on Friday “does not mean that the battle is over,” Qadoura Fares, the head of the Palestinian Prisoners Club, said on Thursday.
Fares claimed that the Israel Prisons Service was still taking “punitive measures” against prisoners belonging to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad organization following the escape of six inmates from Gilboa Prison last week.
Fares also claimed that some of the PIJ prisoners were still being held in solitary confinement or interrogated about the jailbreak.
Five of the escapees belong to PIJ, while the sixth, Zakaria Zubeidi, is a member of the ruling Fatah faction.
The four escapees who were recaptured last weekend are being held in harsh conditions, he said.
According to Fares, six other security prisoners remain on hunger strike in protest of their administrative detention.
“Our people must continue the popular uprising in support of the prisoners,” he added. “This battle will not end until all measures against the prisoners are halted.”
On Wednesday, the Palestinian Prisoners Club announced that the mass hunger strike of the prisoners has been suspended after their demands were met by the Israeli authorities. Some 1,380 prisoners were scheduled to go on hunger strike in the first phase of the strike.
The prisoners “decided, in a unified and harmonious manner, to suspend the hunger strike after their demands were met, notably canceling the collective punishment imposed by the occupation prisons administration on the prisoners,” the club said in a statement.