JERUSALEM, Aug 22 (AFP) - A group of Israeli doctors appealed Sunday for the rights of thousands of Palestinian prisoners staging a mass hunger strike to be respected, after the Jewish state vowed to break the protest.
"The hunger strike of the security prisoners in the various prisons is the last option for this population... to receive proper prison conditions and their basic human rights," Physicians for Human Rights - Israel said in a statement.
The non-profit group, which promotes the right to health care in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, adressed the message to the head of the prison service and the health and interior ministers, Dani Naveh and Tsahi Hanegbi, who have vowed the prisoners will not triumph.
A significant proportion of the 8,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are on an open-ended hunger strike to try to win better conditions.
They are demanding an across-the-board improvement in their conditions including mandatory visiting rights, an end to body searches and the removal of glass barriers which separate them from their family during visits.
Despite Israel's best efforts to deter them, the strikers on Sunday began a second week of fasting.
The Israeli doctors called "on all the medical professionals in the (prisons) and the various hospitals to supply medical assistance to every person in need."