
The Islamic Jihad terrorist organization said on Thursday that its prisoners will not halt their hunger strike unless their demands are met by the Israeli authorities, Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh reported.
The group stated that dozens of its inmates are expected to join 250 prisoners from the Islamic Jihad who have been on hunger strike in Israeli prisons for the past nine days.
The prisoners are protesting a series of punitive measures imposed on them by the Israel Prison Service following the escape of six inmates from Gilboa Prison last month.
The Islamic Jihad inmates are demanding that Israeli authorities rescind their decision to transfer them to various prisons. They claim that some of the prisoners have been placed in solitary confinement as a punishment for the escape of their friends.
Jailed terrorists have several times in the past used the method of hunger strikes in order to pressure Israel to release them or improve the conditions of their imprisonment.
Israel has in the past caved to the pressure and released some hunger strikers.
Some 1,550 Palestinian Arabs imprisoned in Israel ended a hunger strike in May of 2012, in exchange for a package of measures which would allow visits from relatives in Gaza and the transfer of detainees out of solitary confinement.