Prisoners for Palestine in the so-called United Kingdom announce a mass hunger strike: ‘We have exhausted all other options.’ Today, the first two Prisoners for Palestine — Amu Gib and Qesser Zuhrah — began refusing food, the first step in the rolling hunger strike.
Dozens of political prisoners in various prisons across Britain have announced their intention to begin a collective hunger strike on November 2nd, a date chosen for its historical significance: the anniversary of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which the British government expressed its official support for the Zionist project to colonise Palestine.
The action is being coordinated by the Prisoners for Palestine collective, with the support of CAGE International, and could become the largest hunger strike organised in British prisons since 1981, when ten Irish republican prisoners were martyred after 66 days on hunger strike in prisons in occupied Northern Ireland.
The prisoners denounce the British state for criminalising solidarity with Palestine and protecting the interests of the arms companies that supply the Israeli regime. For months, they have suffered punishment, isolation, censorship and aggression for their anti-colonial militancy and their commitment to the Palestinian resistance.
“We are imprisoned for trying to stop genocide”
Former political prisoners and spokespeople Audrey Corno and Francesca Nadin, both arrested for direct action against the facilities of Elbit Systems, Israel’s leading arms company, delivered a letter to the British Home Office on 20 October on behalf of the 33 people imprisoned for trying to stop the genocide in Gaza.
In that letter, the prisoners make five clear and urgent demands:
- Immediate end to all censorship and restrictions on their correspondence and communications.
- Immediate and unconditional release on bail.
- Right to a fair and transparent trial.
- Deproscription of Palestine Action.
- Permanent closure of all Elbit Systems facilities in the United Kingdom.
‘We have exhausted all other options,’ said spokespeople for the group, who stress that their arrests are entirely politically motivated. In many cases, no formal charges have been presented and individuals remain detained under anti-terrorism legislation, a tool of repression increasingly used against activists and human rights defenders.
Some prisoners have been detained for over a year without trial, in degrading conditions and with severe restrictions on family visits, religious practice and communication with the outside world.
From arms factories to prison cells
The sabotage and disruption of Elbit Systems — an Israeli company that manufactures drones and weapons used in attacks on Gaza — has become a symbol of the direct action movement for Palestine. Since 2020, Palestine Action carried out numerous occupations of factories and distribution centres linked to the Zionist military complex.
Faced with popular pressure, the British state responded with a wave of arrests, house searches and legal proceedings that criminalise those who dare to publicly denounce the United Kingdom’s complicity in war crimes in Palestine.
Prisons have thus become a new front in the struggle, where resistance continues in other forms. ‘What began as a campaign to stop the production of weapons for genocide in Gaza has turned into a struggle for freedom within prisons,’ explained one of the collective’s lawyers.
“From Guantánamo to Gaza: the same repressive machinery”
Dr Asim Qureshi, Research Director at CAGE International, described the hunger strike as “the first of its kind in at least two decades” and a step which “brings into sharp focus the violence of the carceral system in the UK”.
“From Guantánamo to Gaza, the infrastructure of authoritarian terror laws built to imprison, silence, and suppress action for Palestine and voices challenging wars and genocide must be dismantled. Prisoners are the beating heart of our movement for justice. We must honour their sacrifices and stand up to challenge the injustices they face.”
>Allegations of systematic abuse include physical assault, prolonged isolation, confiscation of correspondence and reading material, denial of medical care, and restriction of access to the Quran. Faced with the failure of their appeals and institutional indifference, prisoners have decided to resort to the last instrument of resistance left to them: their own bodies.
The continuation of a long tradition of resistance
This new strike is part of a tradition of struggle that unites British and Palestinian prisoners. In early 2025, activist Teuta ‘T’ Hoxha, one of the Filton 24, went on a 28-day hunger strike that succeeded in publicly exposing internal repression and forcing the restoration of basic rights within Peterborough Prison.
Her action sparked a wave of international solidarity: political prisoners in the United States, such as Casey Goonan and Malik Muhammad, joined in a solidarity hunger strike, denouncing the global persecution of those who support Palestine.
“We know that this is not just about getting back a job or a privilege within prison,” Hoxha said at the time, “but about asserting our dignity and rejecting the silence that the state tries to impose on us.”
Their partial victory inspired dozens of comrades to plan broader collective action capable of breaking isolation and highlighting the link between internal repression and global colonialism.
Prison as a place of struggle
The Palestinian movement has turned imprisonment into a space for resistance. Throughout the Zionist occupation, thousands of Palestinian prisoners have resorted to collective hunger strikes, uniting their bodies in a common struggle against dehumanisation.
Similarly, Irish political prisoners, South African apartheid activists and Guantanamo prisoners have shown that the prisoner’s body can become a political weapon when all other means of action have been taken away.
In the words of Palestinian leader Ahmad Sa’adat, secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine:
‘From Ansar to Attica, from Lannemezan to Nafha, prison is not just a place of confinement, but a battlefield where the oppressed confront the oppressor.’
The hunger strike by prisoners for Palestine in the United Kingdom is part of that same tradition of dignity. It is an affirmation of life and humanity in the face of colonial and prison dehumanisation.
An urgent call for international solidarity
From Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, we call on all organisations, movements and individuals in solidarity to amplify the voices of those who are resisting behind the walls of British prisons today, to put pressure on the authorities and to denounce the criminalisation of solidarity with Palestine.
“After we are gone, what will you say you did? Were you with us in our struggle, or did you conform to the very system that led us to our deaths?” Irish martyr Patsy O’Hara during his hunger strike in 1981.
Today, those words resonate strongly from prisons in the United Kingdom to cells under occupation in Palestine.
Prisoners for Palestine challenge us all: their resistance holds up a mirror to our collective responsibility.
Discover more from Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
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