RAMALLAH (Dispatches) – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has called for the release of all Palestinian detainees from the Zionist regime’s jails.
“We must continue our demand for addressing the Palestinian refugee issue and the release of all the brave detainees,” Abbas said at an inauguration ceremony for two charitable projects in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
According to Palestinian figures, there are nearly 4,550 Palestinian detainees in the occupying regime’s jails, including 175 minors and 27 female detainees, along with 670 detainees held under the Israeli administrative detention without charge or trial.
On Saturday, Palestinian detainees in the regime’s jails announced they will stage an open-ended hunger strike to protest the regime’s abuses.
For years, Palestinians jailed by the occupying regime have used hunger strike to demand better living conditions and an end to indefinite detentions.
Abbas vowed that the Palestinians will not leave their occupied territories.
“We will not leave out country whatsoever the conditions are,” he said.
The wife of Palestinian prisoner Khalil Awawdeh, who is on a months-long hunger strike, says Zionist troops have prevented her from entering the occupied territories through a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank to visit her critically ill husband.
Dalal Awawdeh told Palestine’s official Wafa news agency on Sunday that she was denied entry into the occupied territories via Tarqumia checkpoint, located south of the West Bank, saying the regime forces claimed that her entry permit had expired the previous night.
She noted that her husband’s health condition has reached a critical stage as a result of his prolonged hunger strike in protest at his indefinite, unfair and unexplained imprisonment at the hands of the regime, adding he has lost half of his weight and his ability to speak.
However, she said, her husband’s morale remains high, stressing that he will press ahead with his hunger strike until he is granted a full release.
Awawdeh, a father of four, is one of several Palestinian prisoners who have gone on prolonged hunger strikes over the years to protest so-called administrative detention, which allows the regime to hold prisoners without charge practically indefinitely.