Israelis to Use Barbecues to Break Hunger Strikers

Israel's prison service plans to break a mass hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners by barbecueing meat and baking bread near their cells.

The prison service said yesterday that 1,602 out of 3,800 prisoners, who have been convicted of crimes ranging from conspiracy to murder, were refusing to eat.

The prisoners want more family visits, an end to strip searches and the installation of public phones. The prison service says they want more freedom to plan attacks, and reject their demands.

A spokesman for the service said psychological methods had not yet been employed but televisions and radios had been confiscated from the protesters.

"Among the various methods we plan to employ is holding barbecues outside the walls of the affected prisons," he said. "These methods have been tried in places like Australia.

"We have looked at the experience of other prison services such as Northern Ireland and Turkey as way of finding out how not to do things as well as how to do things."