WEST BANK (Dispatches) –
Palestinian detainee, Kayed Fasfous, has been released from the Zionist regime’s jail after a prolonged hunger strike.
He spent more than 18 months in prison without a trial as he refused to eat for 131 days in protest.
The 32-year-old ended his strike last month, after Israel agreed to end his so-called administrative detention.
Facing widespread international criticism, the regime has also agreed to free several other Palestinians, who’ve been on lengthy strikes.
The United Nations has expressed concern about the lives of the hunger strikers. The Zionist regime uses “administrative detention” to lock up Palestinians without charge or trial indefinitely. But the practice is illegal under international law.
The political bureau chief of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas on Saturday reaffirmed that the issue of Palestinian prisoners in the Zionist regime’s jails is a top priority for the movement.
Ismail Haniyeh made the remarks during a speech he delivered at a session on Palestinian detainees, martyrs, and injured on the third day of the ‘12th Pioneers of Al-Quds Conference’.
Haniyeh stressed that the four Zionist troops captured in the besieged Gaza Strip would not be released unless the Palestinians behind bars in the occupying regime’s prisons were released in return.
Haniyeh once again noted that Hamas managed to free more than a thousand Palestinian detainees from the regime’s jails in the Wafaa al-Aharar (“True Promise of Free Men”) prisoner swap deal in 2011.
While praising Palestinian prisoners and martyrs as “victims of the Israeli occupation and its terrorism,” he also hailed them for stepping in to defend their homeland.
Late last week, Haniyeh had said the Zionist prisoners in Gaza would not see the light of day until the Palestinian inmates held in the regime’s jails enjoy “the sun of freedom.”
More than 7,000 Palestinians are reportedly held in the occupying regime’s jails.