Alwaght- Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, al-Aqsa Mosque Friday Prayers Imam, has urged sustained support for Palestinians on a hunger strike in Israeli regime jails.
During his sermons at the weekly prayers held at al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied al-Quds (Jerusalem), he called for supporting the hunger-striking prisoners and demanded the Israeli authorities to respond to their just human demands. More than 1,600 Palestinian prisoners have joined the protest action dubbed the Freedom and Dignity Strike since April 17, which was initially called by imprisoned and former Fatah movement leader Marwan Barghouti. The strikers are demanding basic rights, such as an end to the policies of administrative detention, solitary confinement and deliberate medical negligence.
Elsewhere, in a letter obtained by the office of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Secretary-General on Wednesday, the 17th day of the “Freedom and Dignity” mass hunger strike, Marwan Barghouthi, the Fatah leader organizing and leading the strike, wrote of the conditions he and other prisoners have been facing as the strike entered its third week.
“Israel has decided to respond through incitement, solitary confinement of hunger strikers and repression, with the illusion that this will make us abandon our sacred struggle and our legitimate demands,” Barghouthi said, referring to a series of punitive measures that the Israeli Regime Prison Service (IPS) has carried out against prisoners since day one of the strike.
“Israel cannot silence us, nor isolate us, nor break us,” Barghouthi said, highlighting the effects of Israel’s daily detention raids on Palestinian communities and families, adding that mass incarceration of Palestinians was a tactic “to exhaust and intimidate our people and destroy its ability to struggle against the occupation.”
“This occupation has violated our cities, villages, refugee camps, holy places and Jerusalem, and it arrests dozens of Palestinians daily and subjects them to torture and ill treatment, including during interrogation, and falsely accuses them and adopts arbitrary decisions against them through their legitimate courts, civilian and military, and conducts policies and actions that constitute grave breaches under international law and crimes for which those responsible must be held accountable.”
Barghouthi went on to call for unity among Palestinian factions, saying that the Palestinian people, if united, are “capable of creating miracles.” He also said that the cause of Palestine and “the rights of our people,” were “the most noble and just cause of our time.”
Israeli authorities have detained approximately one million Palestinians since the establishment of the usurper regime of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent occupation of the West Bank, East al-Quds, and the Gaza Strip in 1967, according to a joint statement released on Saturday by Palestinian organizations.
According to prisoners' rights organization Addameer, some 6,300 Palestinians were held in Israeli regime notorious prisons as of March 2017.
