The Ma'an TV channel was banned inside Israel's prisons on Friday, as Israeli Prison Services (IPS) claimed the channel was inciting Palestinian prisoners against Israel, according to the head of the Palestinian Committee of Prisoners' Affairs.
Issa Qaraqe told Ma'an that the news of the ban came from Palestinian prisoners inside Israeli prisons who said IPS officials decided to ban the channel in the prisons after accusing the Palestinian news channel of "inciting and harming the security of Israel."
According to Qaraqe, the Palestinian prisoners said they were dependent on the Ma'an TV channel for their main source of news on Palestine and deeply resented the IPS officials' decision.
"Ma'an is a national TV channel that has focused on the prisoners' cause, their communication with their families, while broadcasting solidarity sit-ins and activities," Qaraqe said, adding that the decision by Israeli authorities was arbitrary and a larger part of Israel's war against Palestinians.
Editor-in-Chief of Ma'an News Agency Dr. Nasser Lahham said that Ma'an TV, one of the most popular media channels in Palestine, "never considered pleasing Israel or any other side."
"We have always been this way and we will continue to be this way," Lahham added.
The decision by IPS officials has followed a long line of incidents in which Israeli authorities have accused scores of Palestinian journalists and activists of incitement against the Israeli state since a wave of violence erupted across the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel in October, including detaining dozens of Palestinians for reportedly inciting against the Israeli state on Facebook posts.
A mass solidarity hunger strike among Palestinian prisoners in Israel has also been ongoining, a topic which Ma'an News Agency has covered extensively, in support of three hunger-striking prisoners currently held in administrative detention -- an Israeli policy of detention without charge or trial almost exclusively used against Palestinians, as Bilal Kayid, a popular PFLP member, entered the 46th day of his hunger strike Friday.
Tensions rose further in prisons across Israel as the number of hunger-striking prisoners protesting Israel's arbitrary detention of Palestinians reached 100 participants on Wednesday, as Israeli prison authorities continued to crackdown on the prisoners in an attempt to force them into halting their hunger strikes.
According to prisoners' rights group Addameer, 7,000 Palestinians were held in Israeli prisons as of May, seven of whom were Palestinian parliament members.
