The hunger strike is gaining momentum despite Israel's practices (AFP)

By Mustafa el-Sawwaf, IOL Correspondent

KHAN YOUNIS, August 26 (IslamOnline.net) – As "empty stomach" battle fought by the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails entered its 12th day Thursday, August 26, Israeli jail authorities pressed ahead with their intransigence, employing further humiliating measures against the security detainees, in a bid to break their will.

As part of humiliating Israeli policies against the Palestinian detainees, Israeli jailers resort to forcing the Palestinian prisoners to strip before being searched.

"Since the strike began, the prisoners who are sent to courts, the clinic or to other prisons are forced to strip and be searched as part of the policies adopted by the jail authorities to humiliate the Palestinian prisoners," Talal Frawna told IslamOnline.net.

Frawna, who was released from an Israeli prison Monday, August 23, after 27-month imprisonment said that the jail authorities use electric shocks against the detainees who refuse to be stripped.

"The jail authorities used electric shocks against the prisoners when they refused such a humiliating measure."

"I saw seven detainees being beaten by the Israeli doctors and nurses after they were sent to the clinic as they were having health problems," Frawna, who lost 8kgs since he joined the strike, said.

Frawna, however, stressed the prisoners' determination to continue their strike despite the humiliating methods practiced by the Israeli authorities against them.

"The prisoners' morale is high and they are determined to continue their hunger strike despite the aggressive practices of the Israeli authorities against them."

Israel has declared its hospitals off-limits Wednesday, August 25, for the Palestinians on hunger strike in Israeli prisons.

"I am not prepared for there to be a situation where the lives of patients and medical teams are endangered in our hospitals as a result of us having to admit these murderers," Israeli Health Minister Danny Naveh told Army Radio.

"If a field hospital has to be set up at a Prisons Service installation, then that is what should be done," Naveh said.

Eat or Strip

After 12 days now, Palestinian detainees are proving their staunch will

Another Palestinian prisoner, Ahmed Lotfi Ahmed Youssef, sheds more light on Israel's practices against the hunger strikers.

"As part of their (Israeli) humiliating policies against us, the Israeli soldiers asked detainee Mojahed Khallaf during a court trial that he either eats the food they brought for him or be stripped before the Israeli soldiers, so he was forced to choose to take off his clothes."

Khallaf said the jail authorities are moving the prisoners from one place to another to bar them from meeting their lawyers.

"Since the beginning of the strike, the jail authorities are moving the prisoners from one ward to another or from one prison to another in a bid to block the lawyers from meeting them."

"The jailers put loudspeakers in the wards for preventing the prisoners from sleeping," he said.

On Tuesday, August 24, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat decried what he termed "crimes being committed daily by Israeli warders against Palestinian prisoners".

"The hunger strike in (Israeli) jails has entered its 10th day and the crimes being committed against our prisoners - male and female - can no longer be allowed to pass in silence," the veteran Palestinian leader had said.

"I call on the world community and the International Committee of the Red Cross to send delegations to see these crimes with their own eyes and try to bring them to an end," he said.

Some 1700 Palestinian prisoners began their hunger strike Sunday, August 15. On Wednesday, August 18, the number reached 4,000 of the some 8,000 Palestinian prisoners jailed by Israel .

The prisoners are demanding mandatory visitation rights as well as an end to humiliating strip searches and the removal of glass barriers in visitation rooms.

Arafat, Tamimi and Archbishop Atallah Hana, the spokesman for the Orthodox Church in Al-Quds (occupied Jerusalem ), joined Monday, August 16, a one day symbolic hunger strike.