The Joint Arab List bloc in the Israeli Knesset, on Sunday, called for an emergency session of the Knesset to discuss the prisoners’ strike in Israeli jails for the seventh day in a row.

   The bloc, in a statement, sent an urgent message to Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein to hold the emergency meeting, and another to the chairman of the Knesset Internal Affairs Committee, David Amsalem, to hold a meeting in the committee to discuss the repercussions and dimensions of the prisoners’ strike.

   The statement warned that the Israeli prison administration resorted to forced food to break the family strike, calling on the Israeli General Medical Association to fulfill its pledge not to allow any doctor to provide forced food, which the union considered itself a form of torture under international law.

   The statement appealed to human rights organizations and health unions to prepare to face this dangerous step, which the Israeli authorities openly announce that they will resort to it soon, based on the law of “forced food” approved by the Knesset.

   The statement express its support for the just demands of the strikers prisoners, saying that “these demands are based on international law, which is largely the achievements of the captive movement through the long years of struggle and sacrifices have been robbed and canceled in recent years in flagrant violation of the agreements about them between the leaders of the prisoners and the interests of the Israeli prisons.”

   In addition, the deputies of the joint list decided to put the prisoners’ strike, their just demands and the denial of their rights and the violation of international law on them, at the special session of the Knesset on Tuesday and Wednesday about the Broadcasting Authority and they will devote their speeches on this subject.

   The joint list stressed that it would spare no effort to raise the issue of the strike at the parliamentary level, and saw the need to escalate the popular struggle in support of the strike and the prisoners’ demands, as well as the need for the struggle to be united and unified at all levels.

   Hundreds of prisoners continue an open hunger strike for the seventh day in a row to demand a halt to the policies of administrative detention and solitary confinement and to improve their living conditions.