Hamas vows not to forget Palestinian prisoners

DAMASCUS, (PIC)-- Palestinian resistance group Hamas has hailed the Palestinian captives held in the Israeli prisons and vowed to be faithful to them until their release, as the prisoners have met challenges on the fifth day in a hunger strike.

In a statement on Saturday, Hamas held Israel fully responsible for the lives and safety of the prisoners and declared that Israel’s treatment of the prisoners would not break their resolve and that they would achieve full freedom.

The statement says that Hamas is considering Israel’s abuses against the prisoners in the Israeli prisons that have caused them to go on hunger strike and called on the Palestinians to declare solidarity with the prisoners.

Another statement by Hamas’s Change and Reform parliamentary bloc says that the continuance of the hunger strike in most of the Israeli prisons is evidence of the cruelty faced by the prisoners in the Israeli prisons and is also an expression of the strength of the prisoners’ will power and defiance of the prison administrations.

On Saturday, the Israeli prison administration carried out several raids in the Megiddo prison creating a state of high tension. Surprise incursions were also made in Ashkelon prison.

A special unit reinforced by Israeli forces that morning carried out several raids in a bid to curb protests by the prisoners, sources in the Megiddo prison told our correspondent.

The sources added that circumstances in the prison have become dire and there is consensus to strike back at the prison administrations, whatever the consequences.

In Ramon prison, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine prisoners who were on strike were dispersed in cells with other organizations in a step to break the open-ended hunger strike.

Abdullah Qindil, the media official of the Waed prisoner rights organization in the Gaza Strip, declared that all forms of support for the prisoners have become “a religious, national, moral, and humanitarian duty,” emphasizing that if the strike fails without achieving the prisoners’ objectives, the prison authority would render the prisoners “slaves who carry out orders and accept abuse without objection”.

Hamas vows not to forget Palestinian prisoners