The following letter from Bilal Kayed was issued from Ramle prison clinic on Wednesday, 31 August; Kayed ended his strike one week prior after 71 days without food after securing an agreement for his release. Kayed is held under administrative detention without charge or trial after completing his 14.5 year sentence in Israeli prison. He will be released in December 2016. In the letter, Kayed urges his supporters and comrades to take up the struggle to support the three Palestinian prisoners currently on hunger strike against their administrative detention, Mahmoud al-Balboul, Mohammed al-Balboul and Malik al-Qadi.

To the heroic Palestinian masses…and to the free people of the world:

My thanks and appreciation for all of your sacrifices for the sake of Palestine and the Palestinian cause which is too often lost in the halls of politics and the shelves of postponement, and in particular the cause of the prisoners, which is abandoned and lost here and there. Today, this issue was brought to the table with your efforts and your support and your mobilization in the homeland and in the diaspora. The prisoners are yesterday’s strugglers and tomorrow’s leaders. We must support them and I remind you that there are still those prisoners who are fighting a vicious battle against this occupier that does not understand anything but the language of challenge. You are the ones who can do this; and I remind you of the two Balboul brothers and Malik al-Qadi, and bless the victory of Ayed al-Heraimi, which is no less than my victory and the victory of others. I call upon you to stand with them in their struggle until the battle of hunger is victorious against the arsenal of the occupier. Inevitably, they will win.

Let us not forget the sick prisoners and those who are suffering from deliberate medical neglect, administrative detainees, and the re-arrested freed prisoners who have been set by the occupation for a slow execution. I do not forget my comrades who continue to refuse to bow in the dungeons of solitary confinement, deprivation of visits, redution of rights who remain on strike to defend the prisoners. The truth is that they are the ones who have written the glorious historical epic, from the teen prisoners, the girls, the leaders and the elders, at their head the General Secretary, Comrade Ahmad Sa’adat, and the leaders of the PFLP prison branch, as the occupation attempts to dismantle the organization and liquidate the victory, but every moment, they are victorious. Certainly, they will prevail.

Your brother, Bilal Kayed
From Ramle Prison Clinic
31 August 2016