The hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners entered its fourth week with the health of its most famous rebel worsening. While most of the inmates ended their strike, which started on 18 August, the strike of West Bank Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti continues, though with no sign of Israeli prison authorities meeting his demands to improve prison conditions, reports Khaled Amayreh According to the Palestinian Prisoner Club, a semi-official body monitoring conditions in Israeli jails and detention centres, Barghouti has lost 18 kilos since beginning his hunger strike and was suffering from acute dehydration. An International Red Cross representative who visited the 46-year-old Barghouti this week drew a grim picture of his overall health. "Marwan is so weak that he can no longer stand on his own." Last month, Israeli prison authorities moved Barghouti to a cell whose inmates were mainly Jewish extremist settlers from the West Bank. Moreover, the authorities have virtually banned all visits by Barghouti's family, including his wife, without providing any explanation. Earlier this week, the Prisoners' Club as well as his family urged Barghouti to end his hunger strike, arguing that Israel was showing extreme callousness and indifference to his failing health and would like nothing better than to see him dead. "The Israelis are saying publicly, 'let him die.' So we don't expect them to show any modicum of humanity towards Marwan. It seems they enjoy torturing and humiliating him," his wife Fadwa said. She said Israeli prison authorities were behaving with "malicious vindictiveness" towards her husband, which was being expressed in the "hateful treatment" being meted out to him. "Even the most basic human rights, such as the right to privacy, which human beings take for granted, are denied him. This is in a country that claims to be the only democracy in the Middle East." According to his family and lawyer, the draconian measures being taken against Barghouti are aimed at demoralising him and destroying his psychological well- being. The measures include solitary confinement -- no contact between him and other Palestinian prisoners are allowed -- monitoring him 24 hours a day using closed-circuit cameras fixed in his room and moving him to wards full of hardened criminals, thus putting Barghouti's life in serious danger. The Israeli media also purportedly published a photo of Barghouti naked. The Palestinian Prisoners' Club said the photo was doctored and that its publication, if it was genuine, was illegal and unethical and "reminiscent of the American practices at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq". Meanwhile, the leaders of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli jails have threatened to resume their mass hunger strike if the "criminal and humiliating" treatment of Barghouti continues. They demanded that his solitary confinement be terminated immediately and that he be allowed to stay with other Palestinian prisoners. Far from improving Barghouti's prison conditions, the Israeli authorities have reportedly made them worse. Last month, the Israeli media published pictures which Palestinian sources said were concocted by the Israeli intelligence service Shin Beit showing Barghouti eating and drinking water during the mass prisoner hunger strike which lasted for 17 days. The hunger strike was originally declared in the middle of August to protest a series of Israeli practices against the prisoners, including beatings, midnight raids and strip searches. The Israeli authorities reportedly agreed to lift some of the measures, prompting the exhausted prisoners to end their strike. Israeli officials, however, deny they had acceded to any of the prisoners' demands. Meanwhile, Israel has apparently decided to release dozens of Palestinian prisoners from its jails to reduce overcrowdedness. However, the prison terms of most of the prisoners to be released were nearing an end. Israel holds as many as 7,500 Palestinian detainees in its numerous detention centres. Many of them are being held without charge or trial.
