WEST BANK (Dispatches) – UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) is calling for an immediate end to the so-called administrative detention of a chronically-ill Palestinian teenager, already held for a year.
Amal Muamar Nakhleh, a Palestinian refugee from the Jalazone refugee camp, suffers from myasthenia, a rare neuro-muscular disease.
The 17-year-old teenager was placed in “administrative detention” by the Zionist troops for six months on 21 January 2021, which was extended for four months in May, and then renewed again in September, for an additional four months.
The so-called administrative detention is the arrest of Palestinians without charge or trial for an indefinite period, on the grounds that they might commit an offence in the future.
His father, Moammar Nakhleh, told AFP after the latest hearing: “The occupation tribunal renewed my son’s administrative detention for the fourth time, despite his illness.”
Nakhleh, a journalist, added that his son will remain in detention until 18 May, under the new order.
Zionist regime authorities in the occupied West Bank first arrested Amal in November 2020, while he was out with friends after recovering from cancer surgery, his family said.

Abu Hawash Infected With Covid-19

Meanwhile, the family of Palestinian detainee, Hisham Abu Hawash, say that their son has been infected with COVID-19 in the occupying regime’s Assaf Harofeh Hospital, and he is suffering from severe symptoms, Anadolu News Agency reports.
Hisham is receiving treatment in the occupying regime’s hospital, after starting a hunger strike that lasted 141 days, in rejection to his administrative detention, before suspending the strike last week.
“The hospital informed Hisham’s wife that her husband was infected with Covid-19, and asked her to leave the ward where he was being treated,” Imad Abu Hawash, Hisham’s brother, said in a statement to Anadolu Agency.
He added that Hisham has been suffering from severe headaches and back pain since Wednesday, warning that his health is deteriorating.
On 5 January, Hisham suspended an open hunger strike in the regime’s prisons, which lasted 141 days, to protest against his administrative detention, after reaching an agreement to release him on 26 February.
Meanwhile, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO)-run Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees’ Affairs on Friday called on the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to visit women prisoners in the occupying regime’s Damon prison and check their health conditions, Anadolu News Agency reports.
In a statement, the Commission urged the ICRC to send an “urgent medical team to Damon prison to inspect the health conditions of the infected female prisoners and the female prisoners who are subject to sanitary isolation, and to provide them with all the necessary medicines, food and sterilizers.”
“The number of female prisoners infected with the coronavirus has risen to seven, which doubles the anxiety and fear for them,” the statement said.