Two prisoners dying in Israeli jail, Family holds Red Cross responsible Occupied Jerusalem : 27 August, 2003 (IAP News)

Two Palestinian political prisoners who have been on hunger strike for the past 17 days are reportedly dying in an Israeli jail, Palestinian sources said Wednesday.

The sources said Musa Dudn, 31, and Ahmed Barghouthi, 27, were no longer able to sit down, move around or even speak, having not had water for the past six days.

A spokesman for the International Red Cross Office in Tel Aviv confirmed that the two prisoners were in a “very serious situation.”

“We made an urgent appeal to the Israeli prison authorities to transfer them to hospital, but the authorities refused,” said an IRCC spokesman told IRNA.

On 21 August, a Red Cross doctor visited the two prisoners and concluded that their health conditions were “very grave.”

Dudin and Barghouthi and a third prisoner are demanding that Israeli prison authorities stop punitive and humiliating measures against them, including continuous hand-cuffing, foot-shackling, and solitary cell-confinement.

Last month, the authorities promised to stop the harsh treatment if the inmates ended a month-long hunger strike they had undergone earlier.

However, soon after the inmates were released from hospital and returned to prison, they were placed in solitary cell-confinement without any explanation.

The Palestinian human rights group, al Dhamir, which cares for Palestinian prisoners in Israel jails, warned yesterday that the Israeli prison authorities were acting in utter disregard and indifference toward the fate the prisoners.

A spokesman for the Ramallah-based group said he believed the Israelis wanted the two prisoners to die in order to demonstrate to thousands of other Palestinian prisoners that hunger strikes wouldn’t help them.

The spokesman also accused the Red Cross of accepting at face value Israeli misinformation pertaining to the conditions of the prisoners.

“They just believe what the Israeli prison authorities tell them. They don’t seek to ascertain the truth,” said the spokesman who refused to give his name