TYRE, Lebanon, 7 July 2004 — Hundreds of Palestinian refugees marched here yesterday in support of Arab Israeli MP, Azmi Beshara, who has begun a hunger strike to protest against Israel’s separation barrier in the West Bank. “We call on the world to stand by the great Arab struggler Azmi Beshara,” said one banner carried during the demonstration which converged on the central square of this southern port city.

“The Israeli racist wall threatens the future of the Palestinian people,” read another banner as the crowd waved Palestinian flags and chanted: “Death to Israel.” The demonstration was organized by the mainstream Palestinian movement Fatah and was also attended by representatives of several Lebanese political parties.

Beshara, who heads up the Balad faction in the Israeli Parliament, started an open-ended hunger strike on Saturday against Israel’s continued construction of its controversial separation barrier across the West Bank.

Speaking to AFP by telephone from the village of A-Ram, just north of Jerusalem where construction was under way, Beshara said his hunger strike was meant to draw world attention to the harm being done to local Palestinians by the barrier.

Meanwhile, riot squad officers regained control of a high security prison in northern Israel yesterday after clashes broke out between guards and Palestinian detainees, prison authorities said.

One guard was wounded when inmates threw boiling oil over him at Gilboa prison where around 800 Palestinian inmates are detained.

“The disturbance ... has been brought under control,” prison service spokeswoman Sharon Gutman told AFP. “The prisoners have returned to their cells,” she added.

The elite squad had been called in after the regular guards lost control at the prison near the town of Beit Shean.

The main Palestinian prisoners’ association, the Prisoners’ Club, said in a statement that 20 inmates had been wounded when the riot squad used tear gas and batons to break up the disturbances.

The disturbances began on Tuesday morning after inmates had all refused to have breakfast as an act of protest, it said. The Prisoners Club said that the detainees in Gilboa had been “deprived of their most basic rights and subjected to the worst kind of humiliation.”