On April 7, two days before the general elections, hundreds of Hamas members jailed in Israel will launch a hunger strike. According to the announcement by the prisoners’ leadership, and in contrast to previous hunger strikes, this time the inmates will not even drink water. The idea is for them to succumb quickly, flooding hospitals and increasing pressure on Israel to acquiesce to their demand. The first to strike will be prisoner leaders in five facilities, followed by all the Hamas prison population. Prisoners affiliated with other organizations, such as Fatah and its top official, former Tanzim head Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences, will join them.

The Israel Prison Service (IPS) has declared an emergency and beefed up its deployment. The IPS has reportedly called up doctors for reserve duty to administer forced feeding as the strike expands and the condition of the strikers deteriorates. Previous hunger strikes sparked bitter clashes with the Israel Medical Association (IMA) over the ethics of force-feeding. The IMA has already informed the IPS ahead of time that doctors would refuse to force-feed prisoners at death’s door.

From the minute Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called early elections and scheduled primaries in the ruling Likud party, this whole scenario was a foregone conclusion. On Jan. 2, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan convened a news conference at which he announced a crackdown on the thousands of Palestinians jailed in Israel for security-related offenses. “The party is over,” he declared combatively, presenting a series of measures that would make life tougher for the prisoners. These included limits on water use (Erdan claimed the inmates use five times more water than Israelis do), fewer canteen privileges, a ban on cooking in the cell areas, and a halt to the practice of housing prisoners affiliated with different organizations in separate wings or jails. Erdan also announced prisoners would no longer be allowed to elect their leadership, a body that in fact provides prison authorities with control over the prisoners and discipline.

In February, Erdan launched a campaign against the use of cellphones smuggled into the prisons, ordering the installation of jamming devices. The IPS had for years been reluctant to use these simple technological means, preferring instead to conduct periodic searches and confiscate hidden phones. Everyone understood that sweeping campaigns of the type announced by Erdan would have disastrous results and that a measured response to the phone issue was advisable. In other words, authorities had decided over the years to accept a certain degree of cellphone use that they could control in order to prevent wholesale use of the forbidden devices but avoid a showdown.