RAMALLAH: Palesitnian premier Mahmoud Abbas has asked the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, to urge Israel to meet the demands of prisoners on hunger strike, reports Global Post. Otherwise, things well get “complicate and become unruly”, Abbas wrote. There are six prisoners on hunger strike, but Ayman Al-Sharawneh and Samer Al-Issawi are those whose conditions are most critical. Ayman Al-Sharawneh has been fasting since July but due to his diabetes he has periodically suspended the strike due to the instability of his blood sugar levels. A multiple month hunger strike is already an arduous event to put your body through but diabetes complicates the matter greatly. The body can either go into hypoglycemic or hyperglycemic episode at any time. Hypoglycemia occurs when the body is without enough sugar. It causes the body to tremble and lose feeling, speech becomes slurred and vision blurs. Within a few hours the body goes into a comatose state. Hyperglycemia occurs when the body has too much sugar. It causes the body to feel weighty, insatiable thirst, hunger, frequent urination and moodiness. While it takes much longer for the body to fall comatose, hyperglycemia does long lasting damage to the kidneys and heart. On Wednesday, Samer Al-Issawi reaches the 201st day of his partial hunger strike which began in August. Both of these men were part of the 2011 prisoner exchange between Hamas and Israel. Israel released 1,027 prisoners for Gilad Shalit, who had been held captive by Hamas for more than five years. For reasons unknown, Israel kept Al-Issawi and Al-Sharawneh captive. Arwa Muhanna, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said that the ICRC checks the conditions of the prisoners daily and related that the chance of death increases with each passing hour due to the incredible length of the fasts. BN
