RAMALLAH (Dispatches) – The Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement has declared “victory” over the Zionist regime following a mass hunger strike by its prisoners.
The inmates took the action in refusal of the punitive measures imposed on them after the escape of six Palestinians from a maximum security Zionist detention center last month.
“The prisoners decided to suspend the hunger strike after they scored victory against the administration of the occupation prison authorities,” Islamic Jihad official Tareq Ezaddin said on Friday.
He added that the details of the agreement between the prisoners and the occupying regime’s prison service will be announced later.
“The victory is a turning point in the confrontation with the [Zionist] jailers,” Ezaddin said.
Some 250 Islamic Jihad inmates went on hunger strike nine days ago in protest of restrictions imposed on them.
In the predawn hours of September 6, Zakaria Zubeidi, a former commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade in Jenin and five Islamic Jihad members tunneled their way out through their cell’s drainage system and escaped from Gilboa prison.
The regime’s prison officials were alerted by farmers who noticed them running through fields.
Four of the Islamic Jihad members were serving life sentences, while the fifth had been held without charge for two years under a so-called administrative detention order, according to Israeli media.
On Thursday, the Islamic Jihad threatened to expand the hunger strike to include all its 400 prisoners if the demands of the inmates are not met.
The prisoners demanded that the regime’s prison service rescind its decision to transfer them to other prisons and place some of them in solitary confinement following the prison break.
The Zionist regime’s prison authorities keep Palestinian inmates under deplorable conditions lacking proper hygienic standards. The prisoners have also been subjected to systematic torture, harassment and repression.
There are reportedly more than 7,000 Palestinians held at the regime’s jails. Hundreds of the inmates have been apparently incarcerated under the practice of administrative detention.