They can starve to death for all we care......and do us, and the world a favour....for a change! *********************************************************
Aug. 16, 2004 17:51 | Updated Aug. 18, 2004 22:32 Video shows Barghouti break hunger strike By YAAKOV KATZ AND AP
A secretly filmed videotape, released by the Prison Services Wednesday, shows Tanzim head Marwan Barghouti breaking the hunger strike
Many cases of strike breaking have been reported on the fourth day of the Palestinian security prisoner hunger strike, including imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti and other strike leaders, who have been put together in separate cells.
The Prison Services released a film Wednesday filmed by a hidden camera that shows a man, apparently Barghouti, eating in his cell with the door and window covered by a cloth.
Marwan Barghouti, the highest ranking Palestinian in Israeli custody, is serving five consecutive life terms after being convicted of involvement in fatal attacks.
Barghouti, the West Bank leader of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, was one of the organizers of the hunger strike.
The black and white film carries a date of Aug. 17 in the lower right corner. It shows a bare-chested man who looks exactly like Barghouti washing his hands and then eating.
Prison Services spokesman Ofer Lefler said Barghouti asked wardens for the food and ate without knowing that a camera was filming from a small hole in the wall. Israel wanted to show fasting prisoners how their leader was behaving, Lefler said.
"I want to show the world and the Palestinians that we are dealing with terrorists," Lefler said. "Barghouti is sitting on a pot of meat and he sends his friends to die."
More detainees join hunger strike
The Palestinian security prisoner hunger strike intensified on its fourth day Wednesday with the number of inmates striking rising from 1,400 to over 2,200.
The strike which began on Sunday started with low numbers but prison officials explained that the inmates were set to gradually join the strike with the peak set to be at the end of the week.
Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat joined the strike on Wednesday in a display of solidarity with the prisoner's struggle. Addressing the Palestinian Legislative Council at his headquarters in Ramallah, Arafat called the hunger strikers "shahids" [martyrs] saying, "Your release is at the top of our list of priorities."
"Together we will continue fighting until the establishment of our own state with Jerusalem as its capital," Arafat said. "[Internal Security Minister Tzachi] Hanegbi says that he doesn't care if you starve to death. I say to him that he does not scare us when he says we will die since we are all prepared to be Shahids."
Prisons Service officials said that prisoners from the Shikma, Shatta and Ohalei Keidar prisons joined the ranks of hunger strikers on Wednesday. The officials said that it is still too early to tell if the rise in numbers is part of a trend or is only a temporary act of solidarity among prisoners.
On Tuesday officials said that the first signs of a weakening of the strike were visible after some 40 prisoners broke the strike, including imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, who was caught on tape by the Prisons Service, sitting down for a meal inside his cell.
Meanwhile Wednesday, some 50 Israeli-Arab protestors demonstrated in front of the Be'er Sheba Prison. Instead of entering the jail and visiting their relatives which is usually their custom on Wednesday, the protestors stood outside the prison's external fence, waving PA flags and pictures of their jailed sons and husbands and chanting anti- Sharon slogans.
"Sharon you murderer – we will win" and "Mofaz, Defense Minister, how many children have you already killed," were some of the protestor's favorites.
Large amounts of police were stationed nearby the prison, with an elite Prisons Service unit wearing flack jackets standing guard on the other side of the fence.
"People think that everyone in jail is a suicide bomber," Arab MK Azmi Bishara, who was present at the demonstration and was fasting as an act of solidarity with the prisoners, who he referred to as freedom fighters, said. "Many of the prisoners are political and are under the responsibility of the Israeli state. Israel cannot have them in jails and not be responsible for them."
Bishara slammed Hanegbi for saying earlier this week that from his perspective the prisoners can strike until death. "He is speaking like a university student activist," Bishara said. "He is now a minister. If he does not like his job he can find a new one. But he is responsible for the prisons and they should be run according to Israeli and international law."
Bishara said that the prisoner's demands to have public phones in their cells and have glass partitions removed from visiting centers are not attempts by the inmates to continue carrying out terror attacks from within the prison, like Hanegbi has claimed.
"If you prevent people from visiting their children for years and they cannot have a public phone which is not listened to by prison officers, then the inmates will have to find a way to communicate and that creates the cellular phone infiltration phenomenon," he said.
Protestors Salah and Diana Hussein, from Dir Hana in the Galilee, whose son they say has been prison for three years since the age of 16 for security crimes, which they called "kids play", said that all they want is to have their son treated humanely.
"We would like to receive an explanation why my son's right to continue studying in university was taken away," Salah said. "Does it make sense that since he refused to take off his underpants and be stripped search, he should not be allowed to study?"
Another protestor, who would only identify by the name Ali, said that he has already served on and off close to ten years in Israeli prisons.
"I know what it is like to go on hunger strike," Ali, from Sakhnin, said. "It is not easy but the prisoners decide to do it when they are desperate and are left with no other alternatives."
