Are the security prisoner wards in Israeli jails really on the verge of an “explosion,” as Al-Monitor's Adnan Abu Amer suggested Aug. 12?

Reportedly, various Palestinian sources in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been making dire warnings that a clash between the Palestinian prisoners and their guards is just a matter of time. The sources suggest that a general hunger strike could spread at any given moment to include all the prisons and all Palestinian prisoners.

Qadura Fares, a senior Fatah member from Ramallah and the head of the Palestinian Prisoners Club, envisages an even more dangerous scenario. He thinks violent clashes could erupt between prisoners and guards and perhaps even result in the torching of prison wards. “The atmosphere right now is one of blood,” he told Al-Monitor. “Any scenario is possible.”

Official Palestinian representatives as well as attorneys representing the Palestinian prisoners claim that the source of this growing tension is the declining incarceration conditions. They allege that since Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, the Israel Prison Service has been imposing stricter regulations and expanded the punishments meted out to inmates. They charge that such punishments include depriving the prisoners of their privileges and go as far as sending them to solitary confinement and banning family visits. The force-feeding law passed by the Knesset on July 30 has also intensified the unrest among the thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.