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Politicians, media mostly ignore Palestinian hunger strike

More than 100 Palestinian detainees being held by Israel without charge continue their hunger strike, but no one seems to notice.
A closed shop is seen in the West Bank city of Ramallah June 8, 2014. Shops were shuttered in the Palestinian commercial capital on Sunday in solidarity with nearly 300 Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike against Israeli detention without trial.  REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman (WEST BANK - Tags: POLITICS BUSINESS) - RTR3SQKE

A courageous Palestinian hunger strike is nearing its 50th day, yet it has barely made a dent on the local, regional or international scene. Palestinian administrative detainees — those being held without charge or trial — are with their stomachs fighting an unjust practice carried out by a country that claims to be a democracy, but no one is paying attention. Israel currently holds 189 Palestinians under administrative detention, and 100 to 125 of them have been on a hunger strike since April 24.

On June 6, more than 40 days after the beginning of the strike and after 70 prisoners were transferred to hospitals, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon publicly spoke out against the detentions, urging Israeli authorities to release the prisoners or charge them. The secretary-general’s statement came a day after the UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories urged Israel to heed the demands of Palestinian prisoners concerning what it called “arbitrary” detentions. “It is a desperate plea by these detainees to be afforded a very basic standard of due process: to know what they are accused of and to be able to defend themselves,” said the committee after a fact-finding mission that also included visits to Amman and Cairo. The committee stated that the massive hunger strike is in response to a lack of due process, as the administrative detainees are subject to unlimited renewals of their detention period, again without formal charges against them.

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