Prisoner Hawr: We will escalate our hunger strike and stop having water

GAZA, (PIC)-- Prisoner and member of the hunger strike committee Jamal Al-Hawr said strikers might escalate their strike soon and refrain even from drinking water if the Israeli prison authority did not respond to their just demands. Prisoner Hawr made his remarks during his meeting in prison with a lawyer sent by the Gaza ministry of detainees' affairs. The prisoner described the coming escalatory step as the stage of "breaking bones and biting fingers" and said that many hunger strikers entered a life-threatening stage a result of their declining health status. Hawr revealed that Israeli officials from the prison authority and the intelligence apparatus met with leaders of the prisoners last night and told them that they ended the solitary confinement of prisoners Mahmoud Issa and Waleed Khaled, but the prisoners reiterated that such Israeli step did not meet the minimum demands of the captive movement. He stressed that after 25 days of massive hunger strike, the captive movement would only accept a radical solution to the issue of prisoners isolated in Israeli jails and those deprived from family visits, adding that the incarceration conditions in Israeli jails must get back to what it was before 2000. In this regard, director of Ahrar center for prisoners' studies Fouad Al-Khafsh said the Israeli prison authority transferred Hamas prisoner Mahmoud Issa from his isolation cell in Ramon jail to Hadarim prison after spending 13 years in solitary confinement. Khafsh described what happened, in a press statement to the Palestinian information center (PIC), as a great victory for the Palestinian captive movement which was able to force the Israeli occupation to end the isolation of prisoner Issa. In separate incidents, Al-Ahrar center said the Israeli prison authority extended the administrative detention of university lecturer Zainuddin Shabana for six months. It added that the prison authority also extended the administrative detention of prisoners Ismail Sweiti and Hatem Awawdeh for four months. The Israeli jailers also transferred Sheikh Hussein Abu Hadid, 60, from the hospital of Ramla prison to Ofer jail. This prisoner suffers from heart problems and uses aspecial device to regulate his heart beat, according to Ahrar center. The center noted that the administration of Ofer prison transferred hunger striker Takyuddin Al-Hawr, the son of hunger strike committee member Jamal Al-Hawr, to an unknown destination. The Ofer administration also told all prisoners that they cannot see their families during visits for open-ended days as a punitive measure for their hunger strike.