Jailed Palestinian icon stages hunger strike

By Abdel-Raouf Arnaout and Ahmed al-Khalili

JERUSALEM

Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel and Palestinian resistance icon, has declared an open-ended hunger strike in protest of his prison conditions.

Salah’s lawyer Omar Khamaisa said the strike was meant to protest Salah being held in solitary confinement.

“Salah is protesting the bad treatment and the policy of holding him in solitary confinement,” Khamaisa told Anadolu Agency on Sunday.

He said the iconic leader -- who has been in solitary confinement for the past six months -- has been banned by Israeli prison authorities from meeting any Palestinian detainee.

“This is a brazen assault on the rights of Salah and all Palestinian detainees, who are suffering from the [Israeli] policy of solitary confinement,” he said.

In May, Salah began to serve a 9-month jail sentence for “incitement”.

He is being held in the Ramon Prison in southern Israel.

Israeli authorities allow Salah to meet his family members once every two weeks.

Salah was born in 1958 in the city of Umm al-Fahm in northern Israel and later studied Islamic Law at the University of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

He served as mayor of Umm al-Fahm for three consecutive terms between 1987 and 2001.

In 1996, Salah was elected leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, known for holding daily protests at East Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque -- Islam's third holiest site -- against perceived threats to the iconic mosque by the Israeli authorities.

Last year, Israel’s security cabinet outlawed the movement, accusing it of "incitement" and "propaganda".