Around 25 Palestinian demonstrators have blocked the access into and out of the UN building in Ramallah since 7:30AM to raise awareness about Palestinian hunger strikers, activists report. Demonstrators protested against the UN’s lack of action regarding Palestinian hunger strikers in Israeli prisons. They demanded “a direct and serious action from the UN."

Police officers were deployed about 20 minutes after the beginning of the occupation and threatened to remove the protesters using force.

According to Sixteen Minutes to Palestine “eyewitness accounts say that UN employees were having difficulties getting inside the building but some are said to have found passage through doors that were not blocked.”

Throughout the day more people joined the protest. They occupied the building until the end of the working day at 5:00 PM.

The hashtag #Unclosed was created on Twitter. According to several reports a handful of protesters demonstrated outside the UN offices in the Jordanian capital, Amman.

In addition to today's protest, Anonymous, the group of internet hactivists, claimed it had taken down the main UN website, UN.org.

Between 2,000 and 2,500 of Israel’s 4,600 Palestinian political prisoners are currently on hunger strike, according to an Palestinian organization.

Palestinians have been staging protests almost every day in support of Palestinian hunger strikers. Protesters staged a rally on Tuesday to protest in support of Palestinian hunger strikers in the city of Ramallah in the West Bank. They gathered outside Mahmoud Abbas's Mukata "presidential" compound in Ramallah calling on the Palestinian Authority to intervene in favour of the prisoners.

The Red Cross on Tuesday urged Israel to immediately hospitalize six Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike. Bilal Diab, 27 and Thaer Halahleh, 33 are the two longest hunger strikers. Both are administrative detainees in Israel, which means they are detained without trial or charges.

“We urge the detaining authorities to transfer all six detainees without delay to a suitable hospital so that their condition can be continuously monitored,” said Juan Pedro Schaerer, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross’s delegation in the occupied territories.

Photo courtesy of occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com and @angrywhitekid