The Times of Israel reports: As over a thousand Palestinians held in Israeli prisons prepared to begin a mass hunger strike called by an imprisoned senior Fatah terror chief, Israel’s Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan (pictured) said Sunday that the strike is really about internal Palestinian politics and not an alleged dispute over prison conditions.
The hunger strike initiated by jailed Fatah official Marwan Barghouti is expected to start Monday – to coincide with Palestinian “Prisoners Day,” an annual event held in solidarity with the more than 6,000 Palestinian security prisoners incarcerated in Israeli jails. Barghouti is currently serving five life sentences for his role in murderous terror attacks during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s.
With the annual event comes the concern of increased tensions in the prisons, and in the West Bank with Israeli security forces. Hamas, Fatah’s main rival, announced Sunday that its members will also join the strike, as did the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), another Palestinian faction.
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