Ten Palestinian prisoners continue their hunger strike against administrative detention

OCCUPIED AL-QUDS, (ST) _Ten Palestinian prisoners in Israeli occupation detention currently remain on hunger strike in protest of their unfair administrative detention without a charge or trial, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS)

WAFA news agency quoted PPS as saying  prisoner Salem Ziadat, 40 years old, has been on hunger strike for 35 days in protest of his detention without a charge or trial.

Mohammad A’mar, Mujahed Hamed, Kayed Fasfous, Ra’fat Darawish and Muqdad Qawasmeh have also been on hunger strike for 33, 33, 32, 32 and 25 days in a row.

The hunger-striking prisoners are experiencing difficult health conditions exacerbated by the Israeli occupation authorities’ failure to hear their demands, said the PPS.

Israeli occupation’s widely condemned policy of administrative detention allows the detention of Palestinians without charge or trial for renewable intervals usually ranging between three and six months based on undisclosed evidence that even a detainee’s lawyer is barred from viewing.

Currently, Israeli occupation is holding some 540 Palestinians in administrative detention, deemed illegal by international law, most of them former prisoners who spent years in prison for their resistance of the Israeli occupation.

Over the years, Israeli occupation has placed thousands of Palestinians in administrative detention for prolonged periods of time, without trying them, without informing them of the charges against them, and without allowing them or their counsel to examine the evidence.

Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes as a way to protest their illegal administrative detention and to demand an end to this policy which violates international law.

Israeli occupation turns a blind eye to the deterioration of health of the Palestinian prisoner, Erouq

On the other hand, the Palestinian Authority’s Detainees Affairs Commission said today that, the health of Palestinian elderly and prisoner in Israeli occupation detention, Muwaffaq Erouq, 78, is gradually deteriorating while the Israeli occupation authorities are turning a blind eye to his condition.

Erouq, who hails from the village of Yafa an-Naseriyye in northern occupied Palestine, has been vomiting on a daily basis, and is experiencing numbness in the feet, constant fatigue and aches all over his body. He also had a medical history of cancer in the liver and stomach, and therefore needs a special type of food and vitamins.

The elderly prisoner is having vision problems threatening him of blindness in the event that the prison authorities do not take action and transfer him to a specialized medical center.

Erouq has been in prison since 2003. He is serving a 30-year sentence for his activism in the resistance of the Israeli occupation.

Raghda Sawas