JERUSALEM // Palestinians dismissed footage claiming to show the leader of a mass hunger strike breaking his fast, saying it was an Israeli attempt to undermine the three-week old protest.
Footage, released by Israel’s prison service on Sunday, claimed that Palestinian uprising leader and organiser of the strike Marwan Barghouti was caught on film eating.
His wife, Fadwa Barghouti, said the footage was “fake” and “intended to break the morale of prisoners” after more than 1,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails joined Barghouti in refusing food on April 17.
The video shows a prisoner sitting down fully clothed on a toilet unwrapping something and putting it in his mouth. Other footage shows a prisoner eating something near a sink.
Assaf Librati, a spokesman for the prison service, said Barghouti ate a candy bar on May 5 and cookies on April 27.
“This is a fabrication,” said Qadoura Fares, who heads an advocacy group for Palestinian prisoners. He said Barghouti is being held in solitary confinement and has no access to food.
“The prisoners will not buy this account from the Israeli side, and they will continue their strike,” he said.
Barghouti, a leader of the second Palestinian uprising, is serving five life terms after being convicted by an Israeli court of directing two shooting attacks and a bombing that killed five people. He has been in prison since 2002.
Polls suggest the 58-year-old Barghouti is the most popular choice among Palestinians to succeed 82-year-old Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.
Palestinians have held large rallies in support of the hunger strike since it began.
They say the mass hunger strike is an attempt to improve conditions inside the jails and gain more family visits but Israeli officials say the strike is a bid by Barghouti to burnish his credentials in an internal Palestinian power struggle.
Mr Fares said on Sunday that some of the hundreds of Palestinians participating in the hunger strike began taking vitamin supplements on day 15. He said guards had punished the strikers by seizing all personal items and leaving prisoners “with nothing except their beds”. Israel holds about 6,500 Palestinians on charges related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel says 890 prisoners are participating in the hunger strike.
Some 850,000 Palestinians have been incarcerated since the Israel’s occupation of their territories 50 years ago, Palestinian leaders say.
* Associated Press and Agence France-Presse
