WEST BANK (Dispatches) – The number of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike inside the Zionist regime’s jails rose to 50 after 20 prisoners joined the open-ended hunger strike on Sunday, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club (PPC) said.
According to the PPC, 30 prisoners have been on hunger for 16 days in protest of their unfair detention without charge or trial.
The PPC said 28 of the 30 hunger strikers had been placed in solitary confinement in the occupying regime’s prison of Ofer since they started the hunger strike.
The majority of the hunger-striking inmates were being held in solitary confinement in the notorious Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank.
In recent days, hundreds of detainees at the regime’s prisons have refused to take their meals in solidarity with the hunger-striking detainees.
The detainees in a message last month said that the practices of the Israel Prison Services (IPS) “are no longer governed by the security obsession as an actual driver of the occupation, but rather are acts of revenge due to their past.”
Nearly 500 detainees have been refusing to show up for their military court hearings since the beginning of the year. The boycott includes the initial hearings to uphold the so-called administrative detention order, as well as appeal hearings and later sessions at the regime’s “supreme court.”
Palestinian prisoners are held for lengthy periods without being charged, tried, or convicted, which is in sheer violation of human rights. Advocacy groups describe the regime’s use of the detention policy as a “bankrupt tactic” and have long called on the regime to end its use.
There are reportedly more than 7,000 Palestinians held in the occupying regime’s jails. Human rights organizations say the regime violates all the rights and freedoms granted to prisoners by the Fourth Geneva Convention. They say “administrative detention” violates the right to due process since the evidence is withheld from prisoners while they are held for lengthy periods without being charged, tried, or convicted.
Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes in an attempt to express their outrage at their detention. The Zionist regime’s jail authorities keep Palestinian prisoners under deplorable conditions without proper hygienic standards.
The prisoners have been subjected to systematic torture, harassment and repression all through the years of the regime’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.
According to the Palestine Detainees Studies Center, about 60% of the Palestinian prisoners detained in the regime’s jails suffer from chronic diseases, a number of whom died in detention or after being released due to the severity of their cases.