Eight Palestinian prisoners are currently on hunger strike against Israeli administrative detention and solitary confinement. Sami Janazrah, Abdel-Rahim Sawayfeh, Abdul-Ghani Safadi, Fuad Assi and Adib Mafarjah are all imprisoned without charge or trial under administrative detention and are refusing food to demand their freedom. Janazrah, 43, has been on hunger strike since 3 March. Sawayfeh launched his hunger strike on 24 March, while Safadi joined on 30 March and Assi and Mafarjah on Monday, 4 April. Meanwhile, Nahar Saadi and Abdullah al-Mughrabi are on hunger strike against solitary confinement; Mohammed Daoud, a former prisoner released in 2011 in the Wafa al-Ahrar prisoner exchange with the Palestinian resistance, who was arrested in late 2015 and the remaining five years of his sentence arbitrarily reimposed upon him, has been on hunger strike for 10 days.
Imad Batran, 41, who had been on hunger strike for 34 days, suspended his strike yesterday, 5 April, in an agreement with the Israeli prison administration that his detention will not be renewed and that he will be released on 24 June after the expiration of the current administrative detention order against him. Batran has been imprisoned since 27 April 2015 without charge or trial and his detention repeatedly renewed. He has spent over seven years in Israeli prisons over scen arrests and previously engaged in a 105-day hunger strike in protest of his previous administrative detention in 2012.
Mafarjah, 28, has been imprisoned without charge or trial since 10 December 2014, shortly after he was released from prison for an earlier arrest. He is demanding his release after sixteen continuous months of arbitrary imprisonment under administrative detention and repeated renewals.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network urges people of conscience around the world, Palestine solidarity organizations and supporters of justice to take action in support of these Palestinian prisoners on the front lines in the struggle against occupation and apartheid. It must not take two and three months of starvation for the calls of Palestinian prisoners for freedom to be heard and heeded; it is necessary to mobilize now and build support for not only the hunger strikers, but for all over 7,000 Palestinian prisoners, imprisoned in Israeli jails for seeking the freedom of their people.
1. Protest at the Israeli consulate or embassy in your area. Bring posters and flyers about administrative detention and Palestinian hunger strikers and hold a protest, or join a protest with this important information. Hold a community event or discussion, or include this issue in your next event about Palestine and social justice. Please email us at samidoun@samidoun.net to inform us of your action – we will publicize and share news with the prisoners.
2. Contact political officials in your country – members of Parliament or Congress, or the Ministry/Department of Foreign Affairs or State – and demand that they cut aid and relations with Israel on the basis of its apartheid practices, its practice of colonialism, and its numerous violations of Palestinian rights including the systematic practice of administrative detention. Demand they pressure Israel to free the hunger strikers and end administrative detention.
3. Boycott, Divest and Sanction. Hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law. Don’t buy Israeli goods, and campaign to end investments in corporations that profit from the occupation. G4S, a global security corporation, is heavily involved in providing services to Israeli prisons that jail Palestinian political prisoners – there is a global call to boycott it. Palestinian political prisoners have issued a specific call urging action on G4S. Learn more about BDS at bdsmovement.net.
