RAMALLAH, May 18, 2016 (WAFA) – Palestinian detainee in Israeli jails Sami Janazrah has resumed his hunger strike in protest of being detained without a charge or trial, one week after he decided to suspend his 70-day hunger strike.

Jawad Boulus, head of the legal unit at the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS), said the Israeli general prosecutor had asked the Supreme Court to give it seven more days to investigate Janazrah.

Boulus said he objected to the general prosecutor’s request and asked the Supreme Court to cancel his illegal administrative detention, without a charge or trial.

Along with Janazrah, two other Palestinian administrative detainees in Israeli jails, Adeeb Mafarjeh and Foaad Assi, have been hunger striking for over two months in protest of their administrative detention.

There are more than 500 Palestinian prisoners being held under administrative detention, a controversial Israeli practice that allows detention of Palestinians without charge or trial for up to sex-month intervals that can be renewed indefinitely.

Israeli officials claim the practice is an essential tool in preventing attacks and protecting sensitive intelligence, but it has been strongly criticized by the international community as well as by both Israeli and Palestinian rights groups.

The Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem, said international law stipulates that administrative detention may be exercised only in very exceptional cases. Nevertheless, Israeli authorities routinely employ administrative detention on thousands of Palestinians.

Israel uses administrative detention regularly as a form of collective punishment and mass detention of Palestinians, and frequently uses administrative detention when it fails to obtain confessions in interrogations of Palestinian detainees.

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.  

M.N