Several Palestinian detainees remain on an open-ended hunger strike today in protest of their unfair administrative detention under Israel’s so-called administrative detention policy, said the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS). PPS said detainees Kayed al-Fasfous and Sultan Khlouf have been on hunger strike for 24 days. Another detainee, Osama Darkouk, has been on hunger strike for 20 days. Meantime, four other detainees have been on hunger strike for 17 days. The four detainees are: Mohammad Taysir Zakarneh, Anas Kmail, Abdelrahman Baraka and Zuhdi Abdo. Meantime, detainee Seif Amarin has been on hunger strike for seven days, while detainee Maher al-Akhras has been on hunger strike for four days. Earlier this month, the PLO Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs called on the international community to break its silence over the Israeli crime of administrative detention, under which Palestinians are imprisoned without charges or trial in violation of all international laws and norms. In a press statement, the Commission demanded “real, tangible action in the way to form an international human rights committee that will immediately go to the Israeli occupation prisons, examine the crime [of administrative detention] in all its details and closely observe the suffering of the administrative detainees, who are detained without any charges or trials, and who live at the mercy of the so-called Israeli intelligence officers.’ ‘The immoral and inhumane abuses associated with the use of this policy by the occupying power violates all principles of international law and humanity, and are in real contradiction with the theorists of democracy and those claiming to be democratic in all of the world, especially America and Europe,’ the statement added. According to figures obtained by Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, in March 2023, Israel was holding 1,017 people in administrative detention, which is the highest number of administrative detainees since April 2003, when Israel held 1,140 administrative detainees.
Source: En – Palestine news & Information Agency – WAFA