Two Hamas leaders start hunger strike in Israeli jails

Posted on PIC on 05/04/2009

NABLUS, (PIC)-- Dr. Nasseruddin Al-Shaer and Ra'fat Nassif, two of the Hamas political leaders in the West Bank, have gone on hunger strike in protest over their incarceration conditions, the international Tadamun institution for human rights reported. Shaer, a former deputy premier in the tenth PA national unity government, told the Tadamun lawyer Fares Abu Hassan in a press release on Sunday that the Israeli prisons authority was holding them in a cell that lacks the minimum life requirements ever since their arrival to the Megiddo prison more than a week ago. Shaer said that the cell is wholly blocked from sun light entailing high humidity and leading to breathing and eye problems other than skin rashes. For his part, Nassif, Hamas's spokesman in the West Bank, charged that the new far-right Zionist government was a reflection of the growing extremism and racism in the Zionist street. He opined that hopes on a progressing peace march was a mirage, and asked Palestinian factions to unite and endorse dialog as the only means to solve the state of internal division in its capacity as the best method to retaliate to that extremist government. Two Palestinian leaders in Israel's custody start hunger strike Date: 05 / 04 / 2009 Time: 11:38 [Ma'anImages] Salfit – Ma’an – Detained former Palestinian Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Addin Ash-Sh’er and Hamas leader Raafat Nasif started a hunger strike on Sunday protesting detention conditions in an Israeli jail, said Faris Abu Hasan, a lawyer who works for the International Solidarity Foundation. Dr Ash-Sh’er told the lawyer that he and Nasif were detained in a prison cell that lacks basic living conditions since the first day of detention. Thus, both announced a hunger strike until they are sent to normal detention rooms, as other detainees. Meanwhile, Nasif described the new Israeli government as "the outcome of the overall public Israeli racial and extremist attitude." He said any hopes of a peace process would be no more than "illusion and mirage."