30 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel go on open-ended hunger strike

Tel Aviv, Israel

A statement released by the 30 Palestinian prisoners currently detained in Israeli jails, indicated they have launched an open-ended hunger strike to protest their administrative detention. This type of detention means that those detained are being held without charge or trial. 

Meanwhile, Israel claims this policy is necessary for holding “dangerous suspects” without revealing intelligence information. This policy allows Israeli authorities to detain Palestinians for renewable intervals between 3 and 6 months. Moreover, this imprisonment is based on undisclosed evidence that even the prisoners’ attorney is barred from viewing. 

According to a report by Al Jazeera, Israeli authorities have been using this arbitrary legal procedure for more than 50 years which allows them to imprison people without charge or trial for an indefinite amount of time. 

This policy has also drawn criticism from Amnesty International, which has described it as a “cruel, unjust practice”. They went on to also say that this policy helps the country to maintain its “system of apartheid against Palestinians.” Furthermore, they have accused Israel of intentionally using this policy to “detain individuals, including prisoners of conscience held solely for exercising their rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association, to punish them for their views and activism.”

The statement released by the detainees indicated that their collective time in detention would be 200 years. For hundreds of years, their occupation has prevented them “from embracing our families or seeing our children as they were born or growing up. We never celebrated their birthdays, we did not accompany them on their first school day,” it read, according to Samidoun, a Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network.

The 30 detainees include French-Palestinian lawyer and activist Salah Hammouri, who is charged with “breach of allegiance to the State of Israel” and also facing the revocation of his permanent residence in the country said a representative from the Palestinian prisoners’ rights group. 

Palestinian prisons over the years have resorted to hunger strikes periodically staged or threatened. This is a tactic used against Israeli authorities to better their conditions, reported BBC. 

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According to a civil rights group, there are currently more than 700 Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails under the administrative detention policy and there are at least 4,650 Palestinian prisoners in total. 

One of the longest hunger strikes lasted 172 days and was done by Khalil Awawdeh who ended only after the authorities issued a written statement limiting his administrative detention. He was reportedly accused of belonging to the militant group Islamic Jihad and has been in jail since December last year, however, following his hunger strike he will now be released on October 2. 

The report also indicated that at least 80% of the administrative detainees have been detained repeatedly, and many of them have been convicted by Israel for crimes like murder and terrorism. 

(With inputs from agencies)