The deal under which some 1,600 Palestinian prisoners agreed on Monday to end a month-long fast against Israel’s prison policy was struck on the eve of Nakba (catastrophe) Day that marks Israel’s founding in a 1948 war when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven out of their homes.

Youths clashed with Israeli police and soldiers in several parts of the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, but there was no repeat of last year’s violence, when Israeli soldiers killed up to 13 protesters on the borders with Syria, Lebanon and Gaza.

To some, the hunger strike proved the value of “popular resistance” as favored by President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah group. But his rivals in the Islamist Hamas movement in Gaza said their own confrontational attitude had paid dividends.

Two of the Palestinian prisoners had not eaten for 77 days, raising fears of a backlash if they had died. Under a deal brokered by Egypt, Israel agreed to end solitary confinement for 19 prisoners and lift a ban on visits by relatives living in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

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