Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah says Tel Aviv should release the Palestinian prisoners who have been on hunger strike for nearly two months.

More than 120 inmates have been refusing to eat since April 24 to protest the Israeli “administrative detention,” which is a sort of imprisonment without trial or charge that allows Israel to incarcerate Palestinians for up to six months and can be renewed for an indefinite period of time.

Scores of the hunger-striking prisoners have been hospitalized due to their critical health conditions. The hospitalization of the Palestinian prisoners has raised fears about a possible death in custody.

Palestinian officials also say the Israeli guards are treating hunger-striking prisoners in a brutal and inhuman manner.

The Israeli parliament approved the first draft of a bill aimed at allowing the force feeding of the Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike.

Force feeding is considered a grave breach of the World Medical Association’s guideline on a treatment for hunger strikers. Doctors’ associations also say that force feeding would amount to torturing the hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has voiced concern over the deteriorating health of Palestinian detainees in administrative detention.

More than 5,000 Palestinians are reportedly being held in Israeli prisons, nearly 200 of them under administrative detention orders.

SHI/SHI