Palestinian Prisoners Suspend Mass Hunger Strike After Zionist Regime Yields to Demands
WEST BANK (Dispatches) –
Palestinian prisoners have suspended a mass hunger strike scheduled to start on Thursday after the Zionist regime’s prison administration accepted their demands to reverse measures imposed against them for months, the Supreme National Emergency Committee of the National Captive Movement, which manages the prisoners’ protests, said in a statement.
“Israel realized that the prisoners are ready to pay every price for their dignity and rights and that behind them stands a people and a resistance that is willing to pay all costs in order to support its fighters in the occupation’s prisons,” the committee said in a statement.
At least 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in the Zionist regimes jails were planning to start a mass open hunger strike in protest of the prison administration’s measures against them.
Palestinian prisoner Khalil Awawdeh has also ended his 172-day hunger strike after the occupying regime reportedly agreed to release him in October.
Awawdeh ended the protest action with a cup of tea on Wednesday, Palestinian news outlets reported.
Speaking from his hospital bed, the 40-year-old said he would remain hospitalized until he could walk again.
The father of four girls launched the hunger strike shortly after his arrest in December last year in protest at his so-called “administrative detention”.
Under the policy, which has been practiced by the occupying regime for decades, Palestinian prisoners are held for lengthy renewable periods of time without being charged, tried, or convicted.
Speaking last month, his lawyer Ahlam Haddad warned that the prisoner could die any moment due to his deteriorating condition, which saw him losing about 45 kilograms.
“I feel that my body is consuming itself internally,” the inmate said at the time, his eyes widening and his voice fluctuating as he spoke. “God’s support, steadfastness, and patience are what enable me to continue.”
Calls were growing internationally for the release of Awawdeh, after his wife shared images of his extremely emaciated body on Sunday, a day after she visited his hospital room.
Awawdeh said in a video message that “his body, on which only bone and skin remain, does not reflect the weakness and nakedness of Palestinian people, but rather reflects and mirrors the face of real occupation.”
He has been arrested five times since 2005 for political activism, and has been placed in so-called administrative detention three times ever since.