Nearly all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails involving aproximately 2,000 political prisoners have gone on hunger strike today, in solidarity with administrative detainess who have been on hunger strike for nearly 2 weeks.
Administration detention is an Israeli policy under which Palestinians are held without trial or charge for one to 6 months. This periond can be extended to up to 5 years by an Israeli military court.
The current protests can be traced back to May 2012, when an agreement was reached between the Israel prison service and representatives of the prisoners, which brought an end to a previous hunger strike. At the time Israel agreed to limit its use of administrative detention to only exceptional cicumstances, but since then they have reneged on this deal and has continued to use administrative detention on a systematic basis which has left the detainess with little option than to launch a fresh strike.
Incidentally this is a lot of people imprisoned unjustly,surely the Israeli government can't imprison the whole Palestinian population to silence them? To many people this sadly appears to be the case.
Amnesty International has long campaigned against Administration detention's use which effectively sees Palestinian prisoners being starved of justice.
Yet again these practices contravene Israel's obligations under international human rights law and international human law.
Today I support the Palestinian prisoners hunger strike in opposition to inhumane prison conditions and Israel's practice of detaining Palestinians without charge. It is more than time that the use of Administrative detention is ended.
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