The Palestinian Captive Movement intends to take a major step of protest on Sunday and dissolve the regulatory committees representing the prisoners in Israeli jails.
If these committees are dissolved the Israeli prison service (IPS) and its jailers will have to deal with each prisoner individually instead of tackling their issues through their representatives.
Last Monday and Wednesday the Palestinian prisoners refused to leave their cells for routine security checks and take the meals served to them as part of initial protest steps intended to pressure Israeli jailers to improve their incarceration conditions and end recent repressive measures.
The prisoners also intend to stage a mass hunger strike next month if their jailers did not respond positively to their demands according to a statement released recently by the Captive Movement’s High Emergency Committee.
However tensions started to run high in all Israeli jails on Friday after the IPS responded harshly to the prisoners’ protest steps.
According to the Palestinian Commission of Detainees’ and Ex-Detainees’ Affairs the IPS dispatched additional special forces to its jails carried out raids on cells confiscated electrical appliances used by the prisoners and transferred several inmates to other jails and isolation cells.
Last Monday the prisoners launched protest steps after they accused the IPS of failing to fulfill its pledge to lift restrictions that were imposed on them in the aftermath of the jail break by six inmates from Gilboa Prison last year.
Those Israeli restrictions include among other things solitary confinement and the repeated transfer of dozens of inmates to other prisons.
