The latest Palestinian Authority tactic for United Nations sympathy is the prisoners’ hunger strike, which it now says is a humanitarian disaster.
Hamas’ supreme leader Khalid Mashaal said Sunday that the Arab League has agreed to bring the issue to the United Nations as the hunger strike by 1,350 terrorists and security prisoners approaches the end of its second week.
After previous failures of fly-ins, “million-man marches” and another ultimatums to “stop the settlements or end the peace process,” the hunger strike is aimed at boosting support for the Palestinian Authority’s strategy of bypassing talks with Israel and winning UN recognition as an independent country, based on its own territorial claims.
“Those prisoners had to start a battle of empty stomachs seeking to stop the violation of their rights by Israel,” Mashaal said. He said Israel must stop keeping terrorists in solitary confinement.
Mashaal said that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is in agreement with him to bring the issue to the United Nations.
“The situation inside the Israeli prisons is very difficult,” Palestinian Authority Prisoners Affairs Minister Issa Qaraqaa told reporters in Ramallah on Sunday. “This requires real and serious political and legal action.”
Thousands of other prisoners are expected to join the hunger strike, and Qaraqaa blamed the Netanyahu government for any ensuing damage to the prisoners’ health, adding that refusing their demands would be the cause of a “humanitarian disaster.”
The imprisoned terrorists and security prisoners also are asking the Palestinian Authority public to stage a one-day general strike.
One Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorists, Ahmed Saadat, has been transferred to a Tel Aviv area hospital, nearly two weeks after he began his hunger strike April 17.
Saadat was sentenced in 2008 to 30 years in prison for heading the PFLP, the same terror group that assassinated Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi in 2001. Saadat is suspected of planning the murder.