RAMALLAH, Tuesday, December 03, 2019 (WAFA) – The Palestine Prisoners’ Society (PPS) confirmed today the transfer of two Palestinian prisoners who have been on hunger strike for over two months in a row to the hospital following the deterioration of their health.
PPS said that the Ahmad Zahran and Mosab al-Hindi, were rushed to the Israeli Kaplan hospital from after their health conditions deteriorated, especially that they have stopped drinking water for three days and been hunger striking for over two months in a row.
Zahran and al-Hindi launched an open-ended hunger strike in protest of being placed under administrative detention, a widely-condemned policy which allows Israel to detain Palestinians without charge or trial for renewable intervals usually ranging between three and six months based on undisclosed evidence that even a detainee’s lawyer is barred from viewing.
Zahran, 42, a father of four children from the Ramallah-district village of Deir Abu Mashaal, has been on a hunger strike for 72 consecutive days in protest of his administrative detention. He was detained in last March, and has served 15 years behind Israeli bars. He went on a hunger strike for 39 days earlier this year during his previous period of imprisonment.
Al-Hindi, 29, a resident of the Nablus-district village of Tell, was detained in last September, and has been on hunger strike for 70 days in a row in protest of his administrative detention. He went on a hunger strike for 35 consecutive days earlier this years, forcing the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) to suspend his previous period of administrative detention and release him in last September before being detained.
Under the “administrative detention” order, Israel can imprison any Palestinian without charge or trial. The order is based on “secret evidence” that not even the lawyers of the accused have access to it. Administrative detention is renewable every 3-6 months. In many cases, some Palestinians are incarcerated behind bars for years, without charge or trial.
Injustice and abuse have forced many Palestinian prisoners into desperate and dangerous hunger strikes.
In Palestine, a Palestinian prisoner in an Israeli jail is referred to as "aseer", or captive, because he or she is not a criminal. What lands Palestinians in Israeli prisons are acts of resistance - from writing a poem about the struggle against the occupation to carrying out an attack against Israeli soldiers in the occupied Palestinian land. For the Israeli occupation, however, every act of Palestinian resistance or defiance is either classified as a form of "terrorism" or "incitement" that cannot be tolerated.
There are roughly 5,700 Palestinians, including numerous women and children, who currently languish in Israeli detention facilities.
K.F.
