A total of 13 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention currently remain on hunger strike in protest of their unfair administrative detention without a charge or trial, according to the Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs Commission.
The Commission said longest hunger-striker of the 13 prisoners is prisoner Salem Ziadat, 40 years old, who has been on hunger strike for 28 days in protest of his detention without a charge or trial.
The number of the hunger-striking detainees was fifteen until yesterday, when prisoners Mohammad Khaled Abusill and Ahmad Abdulrahman Abusill reached an agreement with the Israel Prison Service regarding a limitation of their administrative detention sentence.
Israel’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, Israel 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, Israel 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.
Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency