It’s been almost two months since a group of Palestinian administrative detainees went on a hunger strike April 24. A significant number of the hunger strikers have been behind bars for years without being told what they're accused of and without being put on trial. A hunger strike is a drastic step, but is considered a legitimate nonviolent tool in most of the Western world. None of the Israeli authorities have signaled any willingness to negotiate with the strikers or even to offer a conciliatory gesture to restore calm, as they have done in such instances in the past.

The debate became narrowly focused on practical, operative aspects: on the one hand, Shin Bet is pushing to speed up legislation that would allow force-feeding to prevent hunger strikers’ deaths — which could ignite a third intifada. On the other hand, the military objects to force-feeding and claims it can contain "local insurrections" that would result from a detainee's death.

It would appear to be more than a coincidence that the unusual kidnapping of the three teens June 12 occurred at the height of the hunger strike, and in the Hebron area; some 90 of the 120 striking prisoners are residents of Hebron and its environs. Many Palestinians term the current strike the "strike of the Hebronites." Not only that, two of the kidnapped boys, Naftali Frankel and Gilad Shaar, are students at the Mekor Haim rabbinical college located in the nearby settlement of Kfar Etzion, the first community to be established in the West Bank after the Six-Day War. The leader of HaBayit HaYehudi Party, Naftali Bennett, recently declared that he was determined to advance a plan to impose Israeli sovereignty over this region.

Along with the decision to speed up the legislative process of the force-feeding bill and Bennett’s annexation declaration, Knesset members from the right tabled a proposed law that would ban the release of prisoners as part of any deal with the Palestinian side, or as a goodwill gesture. All these initiatives play into the hands of radical elements in the territories, who object to the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) policy of nonviolence. Israel’s parliament is teaching the Palestinian public that Fatah’s policy of restraint and dialogue does not advance its release from occupation nor even the freedom of detainees who were never convicted. On the other hand, Hamas terror attacks brought about an end to Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip and the (2006) kidnapping of (soldier) Gilad Shalit brought home hundreds of murderers who were condemned for life sentences.