WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Forty prisoners in the Zionist regime’s Ofer and Negev prisons informed their prison administrations that they went on a hunger strike on Tuesday.
The detainees’ protest came following the prison administration’s disavowal of a recent agreement that was reached to limit the so-called administrative detention of the Palestinian detainee, Raed Rayan, who had been on a hunger strike for 113 days.
Local media recently reported that the occupying regime’s espionage unit had, however, issued a six-month new ‘administrative detention’ order against Rayan, who has been held behind bars since 3 November 2021.
The striking prisoners were reported to be members of the Fatah and Popular Front Movements.
Separately on Monday, Zionist prison forces violently stormed the notorious Ofer jail and attacked Palestinian prisoners while conducting ‘search operations’, Palestinian media reported.
The Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) said Zionist troops assaulted several prisoners in section 14 of the jail. Eighty-five newly-detained Palestinian prisoners are held in the section, the PPS said.
Overall, more than 7,000 Palestinians are reportedly held in the regime’s jails. The prisoners are kept under deplorable conditions lacking proper hygienic standards. They have also been subjected to systematic torture, harassment, and repression.
The Palestine Detainees Studies Center says about 60% of the prisoners suffer from chronic diseases, a number of whom died in detention or after being released due to the severity of their cases.
In another development, Palestinians in a village east of the occupied Al-Quds held a strike in protest against the occupying regime’s killing of a man following a car-ramming operation.
Shops, businesses, institutions and schools remained closed in the town of al-Ezariya and much of nearby areas on Monday, the official Palestinian Wafa news agency reported.
On Sunday, Zionist troops killed a Palestinian who allegedly left five settlers injured near the city of Ariha in the occupied West Bank. The regime’s forces fatally shot the man who was driving the car south of Ariha. Later in the day, the Palestinian Health Ministry identified the man as Barakat Moussa Odeh, 49, from the village of al-Ezariya.