The head of the Palestinian Prisoners Society announced last Monday that thirty Palestinian prisoners have joined the hunger strike of Palestinian heroine Hana Shalabi.
Palestinian Authority Minister for Detainee Affairs, Issa Qaraqe, said that Shalabi was hospitalised on Monday evening after consuming only water for 33 days.
Her lawyers and doctors warned last week that she was suffering spells of dizziness, muscular wasting and loss of consciousness.
Shalabi, who has been held without trial since February 16, is fighting to abolish Israel’s practice of administrative detention.
Prisoner society leader Qadura Fares also said that prisoners in jails across Israel have designated different day-long strikes in addition to the continuous hunger strikers.
Israeli prison authorities transferred detainee Nael Halabi from Ofer prison to an unknown destination after he announced he had joined Shalabi’s hunger strike.
In Ofer jail, 70 administrative detainees have boycotted Israeli military courts since March 1st.
Detainees in Magido jail will join their refusal, as well as launching an open hunger strike, on April 1st.
Fares said the society is working on an agreement for all administrative detainees to join the boycott by April 17, which is Palestinian prisoners day.
Qadura Fares proposed that prisoners can either refuse to appear in court, or tell judges they refuse its authority, as academic Ahmad Qatamish did in his recent trial.
A hearing on Shalabi’s case on Tuesday morning will attempt to come to some sort of deal as Shalabi’s health deteriorates.
Fares said the Israeli judge wants to prevent a deal similar to former hunger-striker Khader Adnan’s, in order to preserve the credibility of the charges against the administrative detainees.
Adnan was guaranteed early release and non-renewal of his detention order in exchange for halting his 66-day hunger strike in February.
Shalabi refused a deal in early March to reduce her sentence by two months, saying she would continue her strike to end administrative detention.
The Palestinian Authority minister of prisoners said on Saturday that Israel offered to deport hunger-striker Shalabi to the Gaza Strip, but the government rejected the offer.
Israeli authorities claim that they ‘have information’ that she is ‘a threat to Israel’s security and safety of its people’ however she has not been charged with anything.
Prisoner society leader Qadura Fares said: ‘If they are afraid of her returning to her Jenin community, she can come to Ramallah and work with us and register at the university.’
Shalabi is one of around 300 Palestinians jailed in Israel without trial.
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad last Thursday expressed his support for Shalabi after meeting her parents at his office in Ramallah.
Fayyad said: ‘She is fighting for her dignity.’
Last month, Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, expressed ‘longstanding concern about the extensive use by Israel of administrative detention without formal charge.’
l Also last Monday President Mahmud Abbas spoke with US President Barack Obama for the first time in six months to discuss the long-stalled Middle East peace process.
A White House spokesman Jay Carney said in a statement that Obama called Abbas and told him the United States was ‘committed to Middle East peace’.
He told Abbas both sides need to reinforce the efforts that have brought an end to recent fighting and to avoid provocative actions.
In the first conversation between Obama and Abbas since they met in New York in September 2011, Carney said Obama praised recent efforts by Jordan’s King Abdullah to advance direct discussions between Israel and the Palestinians.
Talks between the Israelis and Palestinians have been overshadowed by the debate between Israel and Washington over a possible military strike on Iran due to Tehran’s nuclear program.
Palestinian leaders have struggled to make their voice heard in recent months as world attention has shifted to the US presidential elections, the escalating violence in Syria and Iran’s nuclear program.
Palestinian officials say that talks cannot go ahead until Israel stops building settlements on occupied Palestinian land required for a viable future state.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has ignored the Palestinians’ demands to freeze Israeli settlement activities on lands the Palestinians want for a future state.
Meanwhile Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahhar said he does not expect an Israeli strike on Iran due to Israel’s international isolation.
The senior official in Gaza said that Iran continues to support the Palestinian cause and the Hamas movement, but denied Israeli media reports that Iranian leaders are training Palestinian factions in the Egyptian Sinai.
Zahhar met Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi in Tehran last Thursday, thanking the country for supporting Palestine without expecting anything in return.
Zahhar has made conflicting statements about the role Hamas would play if Israel attacked Iran.
Speaking on March 7th, Zahhar said Hamas would respond to Israeli attacks on Gaza but would not get involved ‘in any other regional conflict’.
He added: ‘We are not part of any political axis.’
Zahhar said that Hamas lacked the power to respond from a territory that is still under siege, occupied and recovering from previous Israeli offensives.
He later disowned the comments in an interview with an Iranian news agency and said Hamas would respond to Israel and its allies in the event of an attack on Iran.
‘Retaliation with utmost power is the position of Hamas with regard to a Zionist war on Iran’, he said.
