Hamas Stands in Solidarity with Hunger-Striking Palestinians

The newly-elected leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, has pledged his support for the Palestinian political prisoners currently waging a historic mass strike in Israeli cells.

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In his first comments since being elected Saturday, Haniyeh said Monday from a solidarity tent where all of Hamas, Fatah and Palestinian Authority members were present, “This visit is a message to our heroic prisoners that your cause was and will remain a top priority.”

“Your freedom is a national duty and your dignity is our dignity,” the new leader added, the Times of Israel reported.

Hamas’ support comes despite the fact that the strike is being led by Marwan Barghouti, a former leader of Fatah, a rival political faction in the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

On Sunday, Israel Prisons Service released footage that allegedly shows Barghouti eating in his cell. His wife and other Palestinian officials have dismissed it as fake and an attempt by Israeli authorities to break the morale of other hunger-striking prisoners.

A day later, an unidentified Israel Prisons Service official told Channel 2 television that the food was planted in Barghouti’s cell as part of an IPS scheme to break the hunger strike. Food was also hidden in other participating prisoners’ cell but many resisted the temptation, the official said.

The open-ended hunger strike has entered its 22nd day and has seen over 1,700 Palestinian prisoners take part since April 17. As their health deteriorates, Israel has shown no signs of heeding the prisoners’ demands.

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Instead, Israeli authorities have cracked down on the prisoners, forcibly moving many to different sections of Israeli jails, confiscating their clothes and personal belongings and preventing lawyers and family members from visiting them in jail. Leaders like Barghouti were placed in solitary confinement since it began.

Haniyeh was elected by its Shura Council on Saturday, just days after the group released a new charter document.

In an apparent move to ease tensions in Gaza with a gesture toward unity in the Palestinian liberation movement and efforts to garner support from Gulf Arab states and Egypt, Hamas’ new charter takes a softer stance on negotiations with Israel while still backing the right of oppressed peoples to wage armed resistance.

The new statement accepts a future Palestinian state based on 1967 borders in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a longstanding goal of the PA.

While it continues to refuse to recognize the apartheid state of Israel, it has distinguished between the group’s objection to Zionism rather than Jewish people.