Thousands Rally In WB in Solidarity with Palestinian Hunger Strikers
Local Editor
Several thousands of Palestinians took to the streets in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah to express their solidarity with the large number of Palestinian inmates who are on hunger strike in Zionist prisons.
Demonstrators gathered in Nelson Mandela Square on Wednesday, waved Palestinian flags and posters of Marwan Barghouti, the strike leader, bearing his quote "Our chains will be broken before we are."
Barghouti, 57, is a top leader of the Palestinian Fatah Movement. He began an open-ended hunger strike on April 17, dubbed the Freedom and Dignity Strike, along with some 1,500 other inmates in protest at their conditions in ‘Israeli' prisons.
During the past 17 days, more and more Palestinian inmates have joined the strike. Fifty prisoners were reported to have joined the protest action on Thursday.
The organizers of the Wednesday rally, including Barghouti's wife, Fadwa Barghouti, also called for "the largest campaign of civil disobedience" against the Zionist entity.
Barghouti, a highly popular figure among Palestinians, has been sentenced by an ‘Israeli' court to serve five life terms in jail over his role in a Palestinian Intifada [Uprising]. He has been in ‘Israeli' prisons since 2002. He has been placed in solitary confinement following the initiation of the hunger strike.
The Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] on Wednesday released a statement by Barghouti in which he said that he and the other hunger strikers in ‘Israeli' jails had launched the strike for "freedom and dignity" and would continue it until their "legitimate demands are met."
"'Israel' cannot silence us, nor isolate us, nor break us," he said, adding that, "This hunger strike aims to confront the ongoing and escalating unjust ‘Israeli' occupation policies against prisoners and their loved ones. We stress our determination to undertake this struggle whatever the cost."
The strikers are calling for immediate improvements in jail conditions, including longer family visits, proper medical attention, phone access, and an end to solitary confinements and administrative detention.
The much-criticized administrative detention is a policy under which Palestinian inmates are kept in ‘Israeli' detention facilities without trial or charge. Nearly 700 prisoners are currently held in such detention; some of them have served for up to 11 years.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
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