RAMALLAH: On Tuesday, Palestinian prisoner Samer Al-Issawi reached the 200th day of a partial hunger strike that has caused his health to rapidly decline. According to a Facebook update posted Tuesday morning by Gaza TV News, Israeli warplanes have been spotted flying over the Gaza Strip. The update read, “Israeli warplanes (F16′s) are flying over Gaza, in addition to a high alert declared by the Israeli army along the border with Gaza, in anticipation for any reprisal by Palestinian resistance groups mainly Islamic Jihad, in case hunger striker Samer Issawi [is] pronounced dead as he is in a very dangerous condition, for being on a hunger strike for over 200 days." BikyaNews.com has yet to confirm these reports. Since the conclusion of the eight-day Israeli military offensive on Gaza in mid-November, Israel and armed factions in Gaza, particularly Hamas, have been at a truce. Palestinian media and monitors say that Hamas has held up its end of the bargain, but that Israel has violated the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire tens of times, including incidents in which soldiers shot and killed Gazans near the border. Al-Issawi “is one of thousands of Palestinian prisoners who have gone on hunger strikes in the past year to denounce Israel's policy of administrative detention and poor life conditions in prisons," the Facebook update added. The plight of Palestinian prisoners has proved to be a unifying cause in an otherwise fragmented Palestinian political landscape. In April 2012, some 2,000 prisoners launched a mass hunger strike that forced Israeli Prison Services to cave in and meet several of their demands. Two other prisoners, Jafar Ezzedine and Tarek Qa'adan, are presently on hunger strike as well, each nearing 80 days. As Israeli military forces continue to execute sweeping arrest campaigns in the occupied West Bank, many have speculated that the death of a hunger striker could be the precipitant for the next Palestinian uprising. BN
