RAMALLAH (Dispatches) -- Some 40 Palestinian prisoners began a hunger strike in Israeli prisons in solidarity with two compatriots whose health deteriorated as a result of the hunger strike they are carrying out themselves in demand of their release, local media reported.
According to the Al Quds news agency, a group of Islamic Jihad members started the protest Saturday night, and another 75 from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) were expected to follow suit Sunday.
The PFLP announced in a statement that the strike would be the beginning of a campaign in support of Raed Rayyan, who has remained on hunger strike for more than 100 days, and Khalil Awawdeh, who resumed his after the broken promise to release him.
Awawdeh, a father of four, spent 111 days on hunger strike before ending the measure in June after reaching an agreement with Tel Aviv officials.
Both prisoners are being held in so-called administrative detention, used by the occupying regime of Israel to arrest Palestinians for renewable intervals that typically range from three to six months on the basis of undisclosed evidence that even the defendant’s lawyer is barred from seeing.
Numerous detainees under this rule systematically go on hunger strikes for an indefinite period of time to denounce their cases and force the Israeli authorities to release them.
Palestinians and human rights groups say administrative detention violates due process of law because it allows for evidence against prisoners to be withheld while they are detained for long periods without being charged, tried or sentenced.
The occupying regime of Israel has issued more than 54,000 administrative detention orders against Palestinian activists since 1967, when it occupied the West Bank during a heavily Western-backed war.
There are reportedly more than 7,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails. Human rights organizations say the Zionist regime violates all the rights and freedoms that are granted to incarcerated persons by the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war.