❶  Israeli authorities continue attempts to break [prisoners’] mass hunger strike on 24th day
❷ The Prisoners’ Revolt: The Real Reasons behind the Palestinian Hunger Strike
❸ BACKGROUND ARTICLES

• The Economic Exploitation of Palestinian Prisoners
• On Administrative Detention
• The Impact of Parental Detention on the Psychological Wellbeing of Palestinian Children
• Israel’s Policy Of Administrative Detention

❹ POETRY by Fouzi El Asmar

` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ ISRAELI  AUTHORITIES  CONTINUE  ATTEMPTS  TO  BREAK [PRISONERS’] MASS  HUNGER STRIKE  ON  24TH  DAY   
Ma’an News Agency    
May 10, 2017
RAMALLAH — As some 1,600 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons entered their 24th day of a mass hunger strike on Wednesday, the prisoners have reported severe health deterioration — including several hunger strikers coughing up blood — and continued repressive measures imposed on the prisoners by the Israel Prison Service (IPS).
___Israeli authorities have also escalated their delegitimization campaign against Marwan Barghouthi, an imprisoned Fatah figure and the primary leader of the strike.     ___Palestinian prisoners are calling for an end to the denial of family visits, the right to pursue higher education, appropriate medical care and treatment, and an end to solitary confinement and administrative detention — imprisonment without charge or trial — among other demands for basic rights.       MORE . . .

❷ THE  PRISONERS’  REVOLT:  THE  REAL  REASONS  BEHIND  THE  PALESTINIAN  HUNGER  STRIKE      
Palestine Chronicle      
Ramzy Baroud
May 3 2017
Gaza is the world’s largest open air prison. The West Bank is a prison, too, segmented into various wards, known as areas A, B and C.  In fact, all Palestinians are subjected to varied degrees of military restrictions. At some level, they are all prisoners.
___East Jerusalem is cut off from the West Bank, and those in the West Bank are separated from one another.
[. . . .] ___Palestinians ‘lucky’ enough to escape the handcuffs and shackles are still trapped in different ways.
[. . . .]  This is why the issue of prisoners is a very sensitive one for Palestinians. It is a real and metaphorical representation of all that Palestinians have in common.
___The protests igniting across the Occupied Territories to support 1,500 hunger strikers are not merely an act of ‘solidarity’ with the incarcerated and abused men and women who are demanding improvements to their conditions.
___Sadly, prison is the most obvious fact of Palestinian life; it is the status quo; the everyday reality.     MORE . . .

❸ BACKGROUND  ARTICLES

“THE  ECONOMIC  EXPLOITATION  OF  PALESTINIAN  PRISONERS.”
Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association
February 2017
This report addresses the economic aspects of the imprisonment of over 800,000 Palestinians since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, with a particular focus on the role that prisons play in the maintenance of the regime of occupation, from 1985 until the present.    MORE. . . .

“ON  ADMINISTRATIVE  DETENTION.”
Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association
December 2015
Administrative detention is a procedure that allows the Israeli military to hold prisoners indefinitely on secret information without charging them or allowing them to stand trial. Although administrative detention is used almost exclusively to detain Palestinians from the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT), which includes the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, Israeli citizens and foreign nationals can also be held as administrative detainees by Israel (over the years, only 9 Israeli settlers have been held in administrative detention) . . . .
___Since the beginning of the Israeli occupation in 1967, Israeli forces have arrested more than 800,000 Palestinians, constitute almost 20% of the total Palestinian population in the occupied Palestinian territories.       MORE . . .

“THE  IMPACT  OF  PARENTAL  DETENTION  ON  THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  WELLBEING  OF  PALESTINIAN  CHILDREN.”
Plos ONE, vol. 10, no. 7, 17
Amer Shehadeh, et al.  July 2015, pp. 1-11.
For about one quarter to one third of the young children whose fathers were in prison, mothers reported scores above the threshold, showing they had severe psychological problems (SDQ) and severe symptoms of posttraumatic stress (UCLA-PTSD-RI). These percentages are much higher than in the control group of children whose fathers were not detention (table 3). Logistic regression analyses confirm the large impact of father’s detention onto young children’s psychological wellbeing      MORE. . . .  

“ISRAEL’S  POLICY  OF  ADMINISTRATIVE  DETENTION.”
Directorate-General For External Policies Of The [European] Union Policy Department
May 10, 2012.
[. . . . ] In Israel, the Ministry of Defence issues the administrative detention order, to be implemented by the Israeli executive power. Administrative detentions are usually secret orders for six months periods of incarceration, and can be renewed indefinitely. In some cases, prisoners have been held without charge or trial for several years. The practice is based on three pieces of legislation, each of which applies in a different area (the West Bank, the territory of Israeli and the Gaza Strip)      MORE . . .

“TWENTY  COMRADES,”  BY  FOUZI  EL ASMAR
Beloved, you ask me
Of life in this prison, this cell
what of the chains
chafing my wrists
what of my food and drink
and the comrades of my cell?

Beloved, let me tell you:
Our clouds are indeed heavy
But our being here
is a smile of spring,
The shock of thunder
in autumn, after draught.
We are not defeated
Like our jailers.

Life in this prison, this cell
is a palm tree impregnated
at the dawn.
My chains are the round
echo of a muezzin,
Their clank is the ringing
of my people’s bells.

Beloved, you ask me
of the meaning of my food
Here beloved
we grow like the wild flowers.

And what of
my comrades in this cell? you ask
They are the twenty candles
lighting the darkness of this cell
The twenty songs
shaking the walls of this cell
The twenty revolutions
that will eternalize this cell
And we, beloved
we shall not be stopped.  (June, 1970)

El Asmar, Fouzi. POEMS  FROM  AN  ISRAELI  PRISON. Intro. By Israel Shahak. New York: KNOW Books, 1973.
Available from Amazon.
About Fouzi El Asmar.