Ammon News - AMMONNEWS -Dozens of youths and activists demonstrated on Tuesday near Israel's embassy in support of at least 1,200 Palestinian inmates in Israeli's prisons who began an open-ended hunger strike.

Marking Prisoners' Day, around 200 people held a sit-in outside Al-Kaluti Mosque, less than half a mile from the embassy in Rabiyeh, a hilly residential area in west Amman.

"We will not forget our prisoners. The people want the downfall of the Wadi Arab treaty," read banners they carried, referring to the 1994 Jordanian-Israeli peace agreement.

"Our children are in jail [in Israel], and the warders are here," they chanted, pointing at the embassy.

The protesters held national flags and pictures of Jordanian prisoners in Israel.

"We have 22 prisoners in Zionist jails. There are 29 people missing. How can we accept this?" asked former Islamist MP Ali Abu Sukkar, in an address to the demonstrators.

"Resistance is the only way to free our prisoners because successive governments have failed to do so. We salute them and salute their Palestinian brothers who are now on a hunger strike," said Abu Sukkar.

As thousands of people gathered in towns and cities in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, three-quarters of the 4,700 Palestinians held by Israel began refusing food, the Israel Prisons Service said.


* AFP