Tunisia’s People’s Movement Party launches hunger strike in solidarity with Gaza

The People's Movement party (El-Tayyar el-Chaabi) in Tunisia on Sunday announced a week-long hunger strike in solidarity with Palestinians being bombed and starved by Israel in Gaza for over 22 months.

The party issued a statement, reading: "We activists announce the start of our hunger strike, commencing today [Sunday], for a week at the party’s headquarters in the capital, in solidarity with our people in Gaza – their pain, hunger, and suffering in confronting the enemy".

The statement comes after it was announced last week that Gaza had officially entered a stage of famine. On Monday, the death toll from the starvation, caused by Israel’s restriction and blocking of emergency aid, climbed to 300.

According to a post on the party’s Facebook page, around 15 members of the party will take part in the hunger strike.

"This struggle is the least we can do so that our people in Gaza do not go hungry and thirsty alone," the statement continued, adding that it comes "in light of the horrors of the unprecedented crime the people of Gaza are being subjected to, where genocide, siege, and starvation are taking place".

The party members said the decision to launch a hunger strike was "in line with our pan-Arab, national and humanitarian values, and in accordance with what our consciences dictate".

They went on to highlight brutal Israeli attacks against children, women, and the elderly, amid a collapsed healthcare system and no safe areas in the Strip.

The People’s Movement called on individuals and organisations around the world to "escalate their protests in order to save humanity from Nazism and Zionism".

The strike comes just a day after Tunisian activists on Saturday organised three simultaneous protests across the country to denounce Israel’s ongoing attacks on civilians in the enclave.

Some of the demonstrators chanted slogans outside the UN headquarters, while others marched in front of the US embassy.

Activists also gathered in front of the municipal theatre in the capital, located near the French embassy.

Many of the protesters expressed anger at Arab countries for their "silence amid the war of extermination," while others shed light on the growing malnutrition rates in the enclave.

"We are at the UN headquarters to express our anger at the delay in a famine being declared in Gaza, even though it has been ongoing for months," one protester told local Arabic media.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed over 62,000 Palestinians since October 2023, while over 157,673 others have been wounded in the same time frame. The war has been determined to be a genocide by the leading rights group, Amnesty International.