Palestine: How hunger strikers “tied the hands of the occupation”: a view from Israeli prison

Ameer  Makhoul,The Electronic Intifada, Gilboa Prison, 9 June 2012

A demonstration in solidarity with hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners, Jaffa, 12 May 2012.

(Oren Ziv / ActiveStills)

Palestinians have achieved three consecutive victories in the last few months. In October 2011, there was the release of prisoners (the exchange deal involving the kidnapped Israeli soldier).

Then there was a series of individual hunger strikes, which lasted for unparalleled periods of time. These began with Khader Adnan, who went on hunger strike to protest against the Israeli policy of administrative detention.

Adnan’s action spurred an open-ended hunger strike by prisoners, started by more than a thousand prisoners on 17 April. It ended on 14 May, with more than 2,000 prisoners taking part. The strike began a new page in the history of the Palestinian struggle for liberation, written by the prisoners along with their Arab and international supporters.

The agreement signed on 14 May 2012 between the authorities in charge of the strike and Israel — with Egyptian and international mediation and guarantees — confirmed that the prisoner movement not only scored a major achievement, but realized a clear victory. We can now speak of two periods, the before and after, with the watershed moment being the hunger strike of 2012.

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine quits PLO meetings to protest peace talks with Israel

Armed members of PFLP lead march in Jenin

English.news.cn, 2010-09-26

DAMASCUS/RAMALLAH, Sept. 26 — The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) suspended its participation in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) meetings on Sunday to protest direct peace talks with Israel.

“PFLP refuses to work as a cover for the Palestinian National Authority’s (PNA) policy,” Maher al-Taher, leader of the Damascus- based PFLP, said during a sit-in in support of the Palestinian prisoners in the Israeli jails.  The decision of suspending participation in the PLO meetings is a response to the resumption of direct peace talks with Israel, Taher said.

The U.S.-brokered talks started on Sept. 2 are “concessions, especially as the negotiations were imposed as an alternative to the reference of the United Nations and its resolutions,” Khaleda Jarar, a senior PFLP leader, said in a press conference in Ramallah, following a meeting of the PFLP’s Central Committee.

The PFLP is the second largest member of the PLO after the PNA President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement.

The peace talks which are not aimed at protecting the Palestinian refugees’ right to return will actually serve the interests of the United States and Israel, Taher said.

Fatah: Collaborationist Israeli ally

By Stephen Lendman

16 September 2010

At least since the Oslo accords, the Palestinian faction Fatah has served Israel more than its own people.

On 25 August the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz highlighted the latest example. It quoted a Palestinian Authority (PA) source as saying that dozens of members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, including senior officials, had been arrested.

On 6 September, PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said hundreds of arrests had been made in response to the killings of four West Bank settlers, adding, “The decision to carry out the attack was politically motivated and intended to embarrass the Palestinian Authority.”

True or not, those affected included teachers, traders, workers, students, professionals and imams – unrelated to the incident. What is clear, however, is that Fatah’s Preventive Security Service and General Intelligence Service are doing Israel’s dirty work, while President Mahmoud Abbas collaborates during the latest sham peace talks.