Palestinian prisoners still on hunger strike

Two Palestinian prisoners held by Israel are refusing food a week after a deal to end a mass prisoner hunger strike, Israeli and Palestinian officials said yesterday. But officials on both sides played down the ongoing hunger strike by Mahmud Sarsak and Akram Rikhawi, saying it was not a breach of the agreement since the two were not part of the mass hunger strike that ended last Monday. “They weren’t part of the general prisoner strike over conditions of imprisonment, they are striking for their own personal issues,” Israel Prison Service spokeswoman Sivan Weizman told AFP. Some 1,550 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel ended a hunger strike last Monday in exchange for a package of measures which would allow visits from relatives in Gaza, and the transfer of detainees out of solitary confinement. In return, prisoner leaders committed to not engage in militant activity inside jail and to refrain from future hunger strikes.  On Thursday, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, which tracks the well-being of the 4,700 Palestinians in Israeli jails, told AFP that Sarsak, Rikhawi and a third prisoner, Mohammed Abdel Aziz, were refusing food. But both Weizman and the Prisoners’ Club yesterday said Abdel Aziz had started eating again. The Prisoners’ Club stressed that Sarsak and Rikhawi’s hunger strike “won’t affect the deal reached with Israel, since both were on hunger strike before the general strike over the prisoners’ demands began.” Sarsak, who comes from Gaza and is demanding to be recognised as a prisoner of war, began refusing food on March 23, and went 53 days without eating before a short break on May 14 when the deal was signed. He restarted his strike a day later. Rikhawi is demanding that the prison authority hand over his medical file prior to him appearing before a prison release committee to expedite his release. He stopped eating for the first time on April 18 but also ate briefly last week before restarting his strike. Weizman said the two were in “good condition” and were under medical supervision in the infirmary in Ramle prison near Tel Aviv. She said both were due to be released “in the next month or two.”