Hotels and restaurants in the Gaza Strip suspended serving meals and drinks on Tuesday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and instead served their customers a mixture of salt and water, in solidarity with hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners, who had been consuming the same mixture in Israeli prisons for 18 days as of Thursday, Maan News Agency reported.
Head of the Palestinian Committee for Restaurants, Hotels, and Tourist Services Salah Abu Hassireh told Ma’an that “the staff of fifty hotels and restaurants welcomed their customers wearing shirts reading “Salt and Water” and “Dignity is the Dessert,” referencing the slogan of the ‘Freedom and Dignity’ hunger strike.”
Gaza restaurants serve salt and water in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners #hungerstrike pic.twitter.com/jvJ7aT3hCz
— Press TV (@PressTV) May 4, 2017
Some 1,500 political prisoners launched the open-ended hunger strike on Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, April 17, under the aegis of imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi, demanding of basic rights, such as an end to the policies of administrative detention, solitary confinement, and deliberate medical negligence.
Samer Issawi, one of the hunger-striking prisoners and a representative for hunger strikers affiliated with the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), announced on Tuesday that DFLP-affiliated prisoners “would begin refusing water on May 7 if the Israel Prison Service (IPS) continues to ignore the demands of the strike,” Maan noted.
(Maan, PC, Social Media)
