RAMALLAH, After around six months of hunger strike, Palestinian administrative detainee in Israel, Khalil Awawda, 40, says he is left with nothing except bone and skin.

In a video message from his hospital bed, where he is kept following a serious deterioration in his health due to the long and unprecedented period of his fast, Awawda called on the free of the world to stand b by his demand for freedom from captivity in Israel.

“To the free people of the world, this rickety body, of which only bone and skin remains, does not reflect weakness and nakedness of the Palestinian people, but rather it is a mirror for the real face of the occupation that claims to be a democratic state while there is a prisoner without charge in barbaric administrative detention to say with his flesh and blood: no to administrative detention, no to administrative detention,” said Awawda in the short video.

“We are a people whose cause is just, and it will remain just, and we will continue to stand against administrative detention, even if the flesh and skin are melted, and the bone has vanished, even if the souls are gone. Be confident that we have rights and that our cause is just, no matter the high price paid,” he added.

Yesterday, human rights organizations published pictures of Awawda which showed that he had reached a critical stage as a result of his continuation of the strike, and he looked like a skeleton.

The European Union expressed its shock at the pictures of Awawda, describing them as “horrible”, and said he “is in imminent danger of dying,” demanding that, “Unless charged immediately, he has to be released.”

Awawda, a father of four girls, and detained since December 27 of last year after which he was slammed with administrative detention for six months, resumed his hunger strike on July 2 after suspending it earlier after 111 days of strike based on promises to release him before the occupation authority has reneged on its promise and renewed his administrative detention for four more months.

Meanwhile, administrative detainees Ahmad Mousa, 44, and his brother Odal, 34, from the town of al-Khader, south of Bethlehem, continue their open hunger strike for the 22nd day in a row in protest against their administrative detention.

Source: Palestine News & Info Agency