Palestinian prisoners suspend mass hunger strike in Israeli jails, say demands met

Palestinian prisoners who had planned to go on a mass hunger strike this week have now suspended their action, claiming to have already achieved their demands.

The "collective punishments" Israel has used against Palestinian prisoners since a daring escape by six detainees from Gilboa Prison last Monday were top of the list of reasons for the strike, as was an end to the targeting of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) prisoners.

This is according to the Palestinian Prisoners' Club (PPC), The New Arab's Arabic-language sister service, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed said on Wednesday.

Israel chose to end its latest actions against the detainees, "which means the battle achieved all its goals before it had begun", the detainees asserted, saying the hunger strike was, therefore, "suspended", a message from the Palestinian detainees' movement was acquired by the PPC and seen by Al-Araby Al-Jadeed read.

It noted "the heroic [escape] operation and its repercussions, the national and revolutionary atmospheres created by Operation Freedom Tunnel [the prison break] and the retaliatory reaction of the Israeli occupation, which has lost its mind".

There were 1,380 detainees set to begin refusing food on Friday, according to Haaretz.

Prisoners were calling for an end to draconian administrative imprisonment plus the use of isolation and other abuses to stop, the Palestinian Detainees Committee said, according to the International Middle East Media Center.

Israel has also transferred approximately 300 PIJ detainees to different jails to keep them separate from one another, Haaretz said on Thursday.

It was not immediately clear how many, if any, have been moved since then.

It is alleged five of the six who broke out of Gilboa were affiliated with the PIJ.

The escape from Gilboa Prison has been an embarrassment for Israel, while Palestinians have widely celebrated the breakout.

Four of the six men have since been captured by the Israeli police.