WEST BANK (Dispatches) –
Palestinians imprisoned by the Zionist regime under its contested policy of so-called ‘administrative detention’ have continued to protest their ill-treatment and repressive policies through hunger strikes and boycotting military court hearings - even if it means putting their lives and health at risk.
Under ‘administrative detention’, the Zionist regime detains individuals - overwhelmingly Palestinians - without trial or charges for renewable periods of up to six months. The policy imposes no obligation on the occupying regime to present any official suspicions or evidence to justify an arrest or detention - circumstances that critics say violate international law.
Among six Palestinian prisoners currently undergoing an open-ended hunger strike, Miqdad al-Qawasmeh is more than two months into his strike and is now facing serious health complications, according to a statement by the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS).
A 24-year-old native of the southern occupied West Bank city of Al-Khalil, Qawasmeh recently decided to escalate his hunger strike by refusing to take any supplements or intravenous fluids.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Affairs Committee warned in a statement that Qawasmeh’s health had sharply deteriorated, with the young man suffering from extreme weight loss, low heart rate, shortness of breath, blurry vision, migraines and severe pain, and was now unable to stand up.
While the strikes have brought attention to the fates of individual Palestinians in the occupying regime’s prisons, prisoners’ rights advocates say the movement seeks to bring attention to the sharp rise in ‘administrative detention’ sentences and the broader struggle of Palestinian prisoners under the occupation.
According to the Prisoners’ Affairs Committee, three Zionist guards surround Qawasmeh at all times in the Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot, the occupied territories, deliberately eating food in front of him while his right hand and left foot are cuffed to his hospital bed at all times.
Five other Palestinians are currently on hunger strike protesting their administrative detention. Kayed al-Fasfous, 32, has been on strike the longest, refusing food since early July to denounce being held without charges since July 2020.
Another hunger striker, Alaa al-Araj, a 34-year-old civil engineer from Tulkarem, has been imprisoned by the regime several times since 2013, for a combined five years behind bars, many of it under ‘administrative detention’.
Hisham Ismaeel Abu Hawwash, 39, has been in custody since October 2020 and received two terms of detention for six months each. He is a father of five and a former prisoner, having spent a total of eight years in the regime’s jails.