Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails would start a comprehensive hunger strike on 17 April to coincide with the Palestinian prisoner’s day, Fuad Al-Khafsh, the director of Ahrar center for human rights, said on Sunday.
Khafsh, who was released on Sunday after ten months of imprisonment and three weeks of hunger strike, described the conditions of Palestinian prisoners as “miserable”.
He said that prisoners of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and popular front for the liberation of Palestine, in particular, have declared intention to wage the strike.
He said that the prisoners want an end to the policy of solitary confinement, the policy of strip search of them and their relatives wishing to visit them, and the policy of visit deprivation especially to the Gaza prisoners.
An evaluation of the hunger strike would take place 15 days after its start, he said, adding that new demands would be added.
Khafsh charged that the Israeli prisons authority had exploited the absence of human rights groups from incriminating the practices and punishments exercised against and imposed on those prisoners.
Khafsh was arrested five times by the Israeli authorities and spent five years in Israeli jails on aggregate. He completed a book on prisoners during his latest detention.
