Some 400 terrorists in Israeli jails joined the hunger strike Wednesday morning to protest the conditions of their imprisonment.
The main demand of the striking prisoners is the removal of the cellular jamming jacks in the prison cells, thus enabling them to again use cell phones.
According to Orientalist Yoni Ben Menachem, Hamas announced that it had instructed the "Shadow Unit," the unit responsible for holding the Israeli prisoners, "to treat them accordingly" following the Arab prisoners' strike.
Sources in Hamas explained that the organization's announcement in connection with the four Israeli prisoners and MIAs was intended, among other things, to signal to Israel that some of them were alive, thereby exerting pressure on it to exchange prisoners and meet the demands of the hunger strike.
One of the senior prisoners who joined the hunger strike was Hassan Abd al-Rahman Salameh, a senior member of the military wing of Hamas. Salameh is responsible for many terrorist attacks and is serving a sentence of 46 life sentences. Among other things, he is responsible for 1996 attacks on Jerusalem buses in which 45 Israeli civilians were murdered by suicide bombers.
On the Arab street there is widespread support for the hunger strikers. Hundreds of Arabs marched in Ramallah this morning with posters of support, pictures of terrorists and flags of 'Palestine'.