JERUSALEM, Aug 5 (AFP) - Israeli prison authorities are bracing for a mass hunger strike of Palestinian prisoners organized by the Islamic movement Hamas, public television said Thursday.
The protest is to be staged by 4,000 Palestinians being held for security offenses, including 600 sentenced to life in prison, it said.
The prisoners plan to only drink liquids for an indefinite period of time and are threatening to let themselves die, it said.
They want to draw attention to the conditions in Israeli prisons and the inability of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority to free them amid the uprising which broke out in September 2000.
The television said the prison authorities plan to draw lessons from their British counterparts who faced hunger strikes by Irish prisoners.
Ten detainees with links to the Irish Republican Army died in 1981 after a high-profile political battle of wills with then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher at Northern Ireland's Maze prison.