Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Commission published on Monday the most important humanitarian demands agreed upon during the negotiations between the leadership of the Palestinian prisoners movement and the Israel Prison Service (IPS).
Under the agreement which was called “Ashkelon Agreement” the prisoners announced the suspension of their 41-day hunger strike.
The agreement includes allowing regular family visits improving the conditions of these visits lifting the security ban imposed on thousands of prisoners’ relatives and the unjustified ban on more than 140 children who have never been allowed by the IPS to visit their parents.
As for female prisoners it was agreed to gather them in Sharon prison provide them with handicraft tools set a special system for their transfer to and from courts and bring female guards to search them instead of males.
The prisoners demanded improving conditions related to detention education and transfer especially for children.
They asked for a radical change to be made in the prison’s canteen that involves the quality and price of the products available and for modern sports equipment to be provided in the prison yard.
They also required solving the problem of overcrowding in the prisoners’ cells equipping prisons with cooling systems and providing a fully equipped ambulance especially in the prisons that are far from hospitals.
The prisoners asked to be transferred to prisons close to their families’ places of residence and demanded the IPS to stop its night raids and searches conducted into the prisoners’ cells by the so-called Metzada units.
Returning the prisoners who were transferred in the beginning of the hunger strike to the prisons from which they were transferred and lifting the sanctions imposed on them were among the top demands.
In addition to the previous demands further mechanisms were put in place to continue the dialogue on issues that received initial positive responses and others that received negative ones through a joint committee that will begin its work immediately after the strike ends.
