Four Palestinian detainees remain on an open-ended hunger strike today for varying periods in protest of their unfair detention, without charges or trial, under Israel’s so-called administrative detention policy.
Kayed al-Fasfous, 34, and Sultan Khlouf, 42, have been on hunger strike for 31 days. The third detainee, Iyad Baraqa, 24, has been on hunger strike for 24 days, while detainee Maher al-Akhras has been on hunger strike for 11 days, all in protest of being detained without charges or trial.
Last month, the PLO Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs urged 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.
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: WAFA
