Other major goals of the hunger strike are to end arbitrary and indiscriminate beatings and the firing of teargas into cells and to gain access to proper medical care including necessary surgical operations and equipment for measuring blood sugar levels and blood pressure. In discounting the petitions of the prisoners and arguing that giving in to their demands, which include contact with spouses and children, beds to sleep on, and even toothpaste, would make it easier for them to organise terror attacks, Minister Hanegbi and other official persons and bodies are appealing to the catchword of security in an attempt to shirk their responsibilities and obligations under international human-rights law.
Our Invitation for Cooperation with the International Community:
Israel's political establishment ignores the humanitarian and human-rights dimensions involved by dismissing the hunger strike as a security matter and the prisoners themselves as security threats.
Minister Hanegbi made this attitude more than clear by noting that he would rather have the Palestinian prisoners "starve to death" than to give in to their demands. Even more worrying is the fact that prison officials have taken concrete steps to oblige the Public Security Minister by confiscating the salt that prisoners had stowed away to prevent themselves from becoming dehydrated during the strike. Other "strike breaking" measures under way are restrictions on the sales of sweets and cigarettes and efforts to whet the prisoners' appetites by grilling meat and baking bread outside their cells.
For the time being, Minister Hanegbi's comment is the last in a series of remarks by Israeli intellectuals and government officials that point towards the idea that the very existence of the Palestinian people poses a security threat to Israel.
In May 2004, the Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA) published "Let Them Suffocate", a report on excessive police violence during house demolitions in the Galilee (Israel). The title of the publication quotes the words of a policeman, referring to Arab children in a kindergarten where tear gas had filtered in. The HRA is deeply concerned about the fact that hate speech by state officials, which constitutes a death wish to a person or members of a group, is not challenged by the Israeli general public but rather acknowledged with approving silence.
The state of Israel is in severe neglect of its duties as a declared democracy, and the treatment of Palestinian prisoners is an appalling manifestation of this negligence.
Specifically, the resolution of Minister Hanegbi, to let the prisoners starve to death rather than comply with their demands for more humanitarian treatment, clashes with his mandate as Minister of Public Security to protect the rights to life, dignity, and security of person of all those under his charge. The Arab Association for Human Rights expresses its solidarity with the Palestinian political prisoners - both from inside the Green Line and from the Occupied Territories - and supports the humanitarian demands put forward by the detainees. We further call upon the members of the international community to take these grave human-rights violations into account in their diplomatic relations with Israel..........
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