The battle of the empty stomach

The battle of empty stomach is a hunger strike undertaken by Palestinian prisoners in Israel to pressure the prison administration to fulfill their demands.

The beginning

The hunger strike broke out inside Israeli prisons on April 17, 2012 when 1600 Palestinian detainees refused to eat for that day and returned their food to the prison administration in an action they called "the battle of the empty stomach" in which they preferred hunger over submission to abusive policies of the Israeli prison administrations against them.

The detainees announced a general strike in which they refuse all consumption of food and drinks except for water until their full list of demands is met. This hunger strike is considered the largest of its kind in Israeli prisons.

The demands

Media outlets relayed a number of the detainees' demands "in no particular order":

• The end of the practice of administrative detention and solitary confinement
• Restitution of secondary and higher education.
• The end of raids on the detainees' prison cells.
• Allowing family visits, especially for detainees of the Gaza strip.
• Improvement of healthcare for sick detainees.
• Stop the policy of searching and humiliating the detainees' visitors on checkpoints.
• Allowing books and journals.
• Stop individual and collective punishments against detainees.

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