JENIN, Friday, April 28, 2023 (WAFA) – The life of Khader Adnan is in peril as his hunger strike in Israeli imprisonment Friday entered 83 days, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS).
PPS warned in a press statement that Adnan, 44, who continues to be held in Ramleh prison clinic, suffers from a particularly serious health condition and could die at any moment as the Israeli occupation authorities still refuse to respond to his demands, and, therefore, he refuses to take nutritional supplements and undergo medical examinations.
The occupation court at the notorious Ofer detention center, west of Ramallah, Thursday postponed the issuance of a ruling on a petition for Khader’s release to Sunday, April 30 despite medical concerns for his life.
The father-of-nine, the youngest, Zainab, is a year and a half, while the eldest, Maali, is 14, was arrested by an Israeli army force that barbarically raided his house in the town of Arraba on February 5, and has been on hunger strike from the first moment of his arrest. His home was thoroughly searched and vandalized by the attacking soldiers during his arrest.
Adnan has already been arrested 13 times by the Israeli military before his most recent arrest on February 5 over the past 20 years and spent a total of eight years behind bars. During several of those arrests, he has already become the veteran of four separate hunger strikes that won him his freedom from administrative detention.
Meanwhile, Ezziddin Amarneh, a blind resident of Ya‘bad town, west of Jenin, has been on a hunger strike for the sixth consecutive day in protest of being placed under administrative detention.
Amarneh’s health condition, his brother, Hassan, said, is serious as he suffers from several illnesses, including stomach and intestine ulcers, high blood pressure and a leg tumor.
Amarneh’s sons, Ahmad and Mujahed, are also imprisoned with their father in al-Naqab Prison in southern Israel. Ahmad is placed under administrative detention, while his brother, Mujahed, has been sentenced to 24 months in imprisonment.
Israel’s widely condemned practice of administrative detention allows the detention of Palestinians without charge or trial for renewable intervals ranging between three and six months based on undisclosed evidence that even a detainee’s lawyer is barred from viewing.
The US State Department has said in past reports on human rights conditions for Palestinians that administrative detainees are not given the “opportunity to refute allegations or address the evidentiary material presented against them in court.”
Amnesty International has described Israel’s use of administrative detention as a “bankrupt tactic” and has long called on Israel to bring its use to an end.
Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes as a way to protest their illegal administrative detention and to demand an end to this policy, which violates international law.
K.F.
