Nine Palestinians remain on hunger strike against unfair detention by Israel
Nine Palestinian detainees remain on an open-ended hunger strike today for periods ranging between 11, 14 and 18 days in a row in protest of their unfair administrative detention under Israel’s so-called administrative detention policy, said the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS).
Detainees Kayed al-Fasfous and Sultan Khlouf have been on hunger strike for 18 days. Another detainee, Osama Darkouk, has been on hunger strike for 14 days. Meantime, six other detainees have been on hunger strike for 11 days. The six detainees are: Hadi Nazzal, Mohammad Taysir Zakarneh, Anas Kmail, Abdelrahman Baraka, Mohammad Basem Ikhmis, and Zuhdi Abdo.
Last week, the PLO Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs called on the international community to break its silence over the Israeli crime of administrative detention, under which Palestinians are imprisoned without charges or trial in violation of all international laws and norms.
In a press statement, the Commission demanded “real, tangible action in the way to form an international human rights committee that will immediately go to the Israeli occupation prisons, examine the crime [of administrative detention] in all its details and closely observe the suffering of the administrative detainees, who are detained without any charges or trials, and who live at the mercy of the so-called Israeli intelligence officers.”
“The immoral and inhumane abuses associated with the use of this policy by the occupying power violates all principles of international law and humanity, and are in real contradiction with the theorists of democracy and those claiming to be democratic in all of the world, especially America and Europe,” the statement added.
According to figures obtained by Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, in March 2023, Israel was holding 1,017 people in administrative detention, which is the highest number of administrative detainees since April 2003, when Israel held 1,140 administrative detainees.
