RAMALLAH (Al Jazeera/Middle East Eye) – The Zionist regime has extended the detention of Palestinian prisoner Khalil Awawdeh, who ended a 172-day hunger strike in August, days before his expected release.
Awawdeh, 40, was due to be released on October 2, but the regime’s court in Rishon LeZion, near Tel Aviv, has ruled that he would be held until at least October 9, his wife told Al Jazeera.
According to prisoners’ rights groups and his family, Awawdeh’s imprisonment was extended under the claim that he attempted to take the mobile phone he had at Assaf Harofeh hospital with him to the Ramla prison clinic where he was transferred.
“We don’t know what will happen with this new case, whether it would be closed on bail, or whether he will be released, or put on trial for this new case,” Dalal, Awawdeh’s wife, said.
“We feel frustration and pain. This is an occupation and it’s not new to us that they are trying to ruin the joy and Khalil’s triumph, in that he seized his freedom from them,” she continued.
The father of four was arrested by Zionist troops from his home in the village of Ithna, south of the city of Al-Khalil in the occupied West Bank, in December 2021.
He was placed in so-called “administrative detention” – a policy by the occupying regime that allows the indefinite imprisonment of Palestinians without trial or charge, based on “secret information” that is not accessible to the detainee nor his lawyer.
In another development, prominent French-Palestinian human rights lawyer Salah Hamouri has joined a mass hunger strike in protest at his detention without charge by the occupying regime for more than half a year.
The 37-year old rights lawyer was arrested on 7 March at his home in the Kufr Aqab neighborhood in occupied East Al-Quds, where Zionist troops entered his bedroom, and grabbed him from his bed while still sleeping at dawn. He has since been held in prison under the “administrative detention”.
Hamouri has been on strike against the controversial measure since Sunday, along with 29 other administrative detainees.
There are reportedly more than 7,000 Palestinians held in the occupying regime’s jails. Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes in an attempt to express outrage at the detentions.
Human rights organizations say the occupying regime violates all the rights and freedoms granted to prisoners by the Geneva Convention. Amnesty International has described the regime’s administrative detention policy as a “cruel, unjust practice which helps maintain Israel’s system of apartheid against Palestinians.”