Palestine Hunger Strikers Finally Agree to Eat
A hunger strike among Palestinian prisoners in Israel has been growing of late, to the point where as many as 2,000 of the more than 4,500 Palestinians being held by Israel have been refusing to eat, but on Monday they agreed to end the strike. The prisoners, two of whom have been refusing food for 77 days, won their demands to have family visits reinstated and to be moved out of solitary confinement reports CNN's Kareem Khadder, who has the most succinct rundown we've seen of the terms:
Ziad Abu Ein, the Palestinian deputy minister of detainees and ex-detainees, said Israel agreed that all Palestinian prisoners who are currently in solitary confinement will be moved out and into other jail cells.
Also, Israel will allow families from the West Bank and Gaza to visit inmates, he said.
And finally, Israel agreed not to renew the prison terms of Palestinians who are currently held on administrative detention, the deputy minister said. Those terms are generally six months, but Israel currently can renew them indefinitely.
For their part, prisoners "were to sign a commitment 'not to engage in actions contravening security inside the jails,' " the Israel Prisons Authority said in a statement, according to Reuters, whose report provides the most context. Reuters' Nidal al-Mughrabi goes on to note that "Israeli authorities had balked at the agreement's call for the release of any inmate whose detention term, usually a six-month period that can be renewed by a military court, has ended, according to officials involved in the talks." That disagreement had caused a deadlock, but Egyptian moderators managed to break it. Since Israeli officials agreed to the demand they had previously rejected, it looks like the prisoners came out ahead in the negotiations.
