Meshaal raises prisoner hunger strike in Cairo

Hamas head Khaled Meshaal was on Sunday to discuss a mass hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners at talks with Egypt's top diplomat and the Arab League chief, an official said. "A Hamas delegation headed by brother Khaled Meshaal will meet the Egyptian Foreign Minister (Mohamed Kamel Amr) and will meet Secretary General of the Arab League, Nabil al-Arabi," Hamas politburo member Izzat al-Rishq wrote on his Facebook page. "The issue of hunger-striking prisoners will be at the top of their discussions in addition to the reconciliation file," he said. Some 1,350 Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel are currently 13 days into a mass hunger strike to protest against the conditions in which they are being held, with many more expected to join them in the coming days. Another eight prisoners have been refusing food for a longer period of time, with two of them now into the 61st day of their hunger strike, despite increasingly chronic health problems. The visiting Hamas delegation would stress the need for Arab and international support over the prisoners' cause, Rishq said. According to the Palestinian Information Centre (PIC), a news website close to Hamas, Meshaal met Egyptian intelligence chief Murad Mohammed Muafi in Cairo on Saturday. Sami Khater, a member of Hamas's political bureau, said the two discussed the prisoners' hunger strike as well as the stalled attempts to implement a reconciliation agreement with its political rival, Fatah. "We put our Egyptian brothers in the picture as to the situation of prisoners in the occupation's prisons, and that their situation calls for a series of political, popular and media campaigns to show solidarity with them," he told the website. They also discussed ways of implementing the reconciliation agreement, which has made next to no progress since it was signed in May 2011, although Hamas was seeking to unblock the process, he said. Meshaal, who arrived in Cairo on Friday, also met with his Islamic Jihad counterpart, Ramadan Shallah, on Saturday, the website said, without saying what was discussed. Hamas is currently renewing its Shura advisory council which will select the movement's political bureau. Part of the Hamas leadership, particularly in Gaza, has accused Meshaal of making too many concessions in the search for reconciliation with Fatah.