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Palestinian prisoners began their fourth week of hunger strikes today protesting abusive and sub-standard conditions in Israeli jails in what has been dubbed by supporters as the War of the Empty Stomachs. The 1,500 inmates are demanding the Israeli government restore visitation rights to family members and end the use of Administrative Detentions, which allows for the arrest and jailing of suspects without trial. On May 4, the Palestinian Authority’s minister of detainees said that if demands for improved prison conditions were not met, another 3,000 prisoners would join the hunger strike.

The Israeli government has shown signs that it wishes to bring the strike to an end. Last Tuesday, Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch convened a special meeting to discuss the situation and indicated a possible reduction in the use of administrative detentions. This most recent wave of prisoner unrest comes just 2 months after the release of Khader Adnan, who went without food for over 60 days and attracted intense international pressure on the Israeli government.

On Wednesday, UN envoy to the Middle East Robert Serry urged Israel to resolve the crisis, however, overall international response to this round of hunger strikes has been mild. Richard Falk, UN special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, has bemoaned the lack of coverage by western media, writing in a recent blog post that, “when Palestinians resort to non violent forms of resistance … their actions fall mainly on deaf ears and blind eyes.”

GUEST: Richard Falk, UN special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, an Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of Intertional Law at Princeton University and a Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at UC Santa Barbara