PCHR Respects Prisoner's Decision To End Hunger Strike

Ref: 57/2012
Date: 15 May 2012
Time: 12:30 GMT

PCHR Welcomes The Agreement, Based On Which Palestinian Prisoners Ended Their Hunger Strike, And Expresses Respect To The Prisoners' Decision

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) welcomes the agreement reached yesterday, 14 May 2012, between Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and the Israeli prisons administration. Based on this agreement, more than 1,600 Palestinians in Israeli jails ended their open-ended hunger strike in exchange for meeting many of their demands. PCHR expresses respect for the prisoners' decision to end their open-ended hunger strike.

Almost a third of Palestinian prisoners in Israel started a hunger strike on 17 April 2012. Other individual prisoners started to hunger strike on 29 February 2012. The demands of the prisoners on hunger strike included improving detention conditions in Israeli jails and detention centers, allowing family visitations, especially for prisoners from the Gaza Strip, putting an end to solitary confinement, putting an end to administrative detention, allowing prisoners to pursue their education, and putting an end to night searching campaigns.

For many years, Palestinian prisoners could only get their rights recognized by the Israeli prisons administration through struggle and hunger strikes. A number of Palestinian prisoners collectively went on hunger strike for 28 days, while others individually went on hunger strike for 76 days. This hunger strike is one of the most serious hunger strikes in the Israeli jails. It is also the most complex, as it was the longest. The agreement reached, which will hopefully set a standard for Palestinian prisoners' demands, would not have been reached without the struggle and persistence of prisoners who put their lives at risk, in one of the highest forms of resistance and peaceful protest.

PCHR hopes that the articles of the agreement will be applied, and that the articles of this agreement will meet the prisoners’ demands, especially the ending of solitary confinement, allowing family visitations, especially for families from Gaza and for families denied visitations on security grounds, improving the detention conditions, and ending the use of administrative detention.

In this context, PCHR reiterates that releasing all of the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails is a principal demand. Till the release of all these prisoners in Israeli jails, PCHR calls upon:

1. The international community and human rights organizations to exert pressure on Israel to improve detention conditions so that the prisoners do not go on a new hunger strike.

2. The Israeli authorities to respect the terms of the agreement, and to apply these terms, as well as to review its policies implemented against Palestinian prisoners, in a way that ensures respect for international standards relating to the treatment of detainees.

ENDS

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