GAZA CITY, 17 August 2004 — Israel yesterday announced plans to use the aromas of barbecues and fresh bread to break a day-old hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners. The 1,700 inmates, seen by Palestinians as symbols of resistance to Israeli occupation, want wardens to stop strip searches, allow more frequent family visits, improve sanitary conditions and install public telephones, supporters said.

Israeli officials call the protest launched Sunday a ploy by the prisoners to secure easier communication with groups waging an almost four-year-old uprising, and have vowed to fight their liquids-only fast.

The Prisons Service said it would draw on tactics used in hunger strikes by jailed Northern Irish militants in the 1970s and 1980s, such as withholding basic amenities. “Among the various methods we plan to employ is holding barbecues outside the walls of the affected prisons,” a Prisons Service spokesman said.

“We look at psychological means to deal with problems like this,” Prisons Service spokesman Ofer Lefler said. “Our interest is to return prisoners to eating as soon as possible.” He said no decision had been made on when to begin the threatened cookouts.

The hunger strike was praised by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, himself a virtual prisoner of Israel who has been confined to his West Bank compound for months. Arafat told reporters the hunger strike was to protest against “this occupier and its racist and inhumane means.”

Israeli human rights group B’Tselem says about 7,000 Palestinians, excluding common criminals, are being held in Israeli civilian prisons or military jails. About half are either being detained without charge or until the end of criminal proceedings against them. The other half have been convicted of security-related offenses.

“We declare, in the name of God, our national decision to launch an open-ended hunger strike,” the Palestinian Prisoners Society said in a statement. It accused Israel of “robbing us of all our rights, treading on our dignity and treating us like animals”.

— Additional input from agencies