Palestinian Prisoners Announce Major Hunger Strike over Cellphone Crackdown

By Staff, Agencies

Palestinian security prisoners at the Zionist Ketziot Prison have announced that they will launch a major hunger strike next week to protest an intensifying crackdown on illicit cellphone usage among inmates, according to the Palestinian Authority [PA].

Relatively, the PA Prisoners Affairs Commission spokesman Hassan Abd Rabbo said on Monday that the strike will be launched on April 7, two days before ‘Israeli’ elections, and be observed by inmates affiliated with Hamas, Fatah and other Palestinian resistance factions.

Rabbo said the hunger strike will begin at Ketziot, and be extended gradually to include Palestinian prisoners in other Zionist prisons.

He further added that the prisoners were launching the strike to protest their incarceration conditions — particularly the recent ‘Israeli’ measures to restrict cellphone usage by the prisoners, including the installation of jamming systems.

Earlier on Sunday, the Palestinian Prisoners Club said that riots at Ketziot sparked by the crackdown have injured over 120 Palestinian inmates since February.

The ‘Israel’ Prisons Service officials have completely isolated several prisoners involved in the riot in “very dire conditions,” stripping them of their personal belongings, family visitation rights and interactions with other prisoners, the group added.