300 Palestinian Hunger Strikers Agree to Take Food

After a nearly two-week hunger strike, a large percentage of Palestinian security prisoners called it quits on Sunday after Israeli authorities refused their demands for improved treatment.

300 strikers “agreed to take food without having obtained” any of their demands, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan told Army Radio.

“Negotiations are out of the question,” he said, though acknowledging that 920 Palestinian prisoners remained on hunger strike. The prisoners are demanding a variety of things, including better medical care and phone access.

The Palestinians, for their part, claimed that 1,500 prisoners were keeping up their fast in Israeli jails.

Erdan also said the prison service planned to set up four medical centers inside jails “to avoid as much as possible the transfer of hunger striking detainees to civilian hospitals.”