RAMALLAH, Sunday, July 19, 2020 (WAFA) – Three Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails are currently on hunger strike, two of them in protest against their administrative detention without charge or trial, today said the Palestinian Prisoner Society (PPS).

Odi Shehadeh, from Deheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem, and Fadi Ghneimat, from the town of Surif in the south of the West Bank, have been on hunger strike for 27 and 26 days in a row respectively at Ofer military camp near Ramallah, protesting their illegal detention with no charge or trial.

A third prisoner, Mohammad Abul-Rob, has also started in a hunger strike in solidarity with cancer-patient and prisoner in Israeli detention, Kamal Abu Waar, who last week was diagnosed with coronavirus at the Israeli prison of Gilboa. Abul-Rob has been in jail since 2003, and is serving a 30-year-sentence.

Shehadeh's family said an Israeli court had renewed their son's detention by four renewable months despite his hunger strike, the third such administrative order he receives since his arrest in February 2019.

Ghneimat had also his administrative detention renewed for the third time, although an Israeli court had ruled his administrative detention as final the second time he received the order. He is a father of four children, and is the son of Ibrahim Abdullah Ghneimat, a Palestinian political prisoner serving a life sentence in Israeli detention.

There are about 4,500 Palestinian and Arab political prisoners serving sentences in Israeli detention for resisting the prolonged Israeli occupation of their homeland. Of those, there are some 350 detainees held in prison as administrative detainees, without a charge or trial including minors and elderly.

Administrative detention is a procedure that allows the Israeli military prosecutor to hold prisoners indefinitely on secret information without charging them or allowing them to stand trial. Administrative detention is mainly used to detain Palestinians from the West Bank, Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and Palestinians holding the Israeli nationality. 

M.N