Days of Palestine – Lod

Dozens of activists demonstrated Saturday in front of Assaf Harofeh Hospital in Tel Aviv, where Palestinian prisoner Khalil Awawdeh is being treated due to a severe deterioration in his health after 153 days of hunger strike in protest of his administrative detention without charge or trial.

The protest was called for by Palestinian national and popular forces in the 1948 occupied land in support of hunger striking Palestinian prisoners and the Israeli prison administration’s arbitrary measures against them.

Protesters carried the Palestinian flag and pictures of Awawdeh while chanting slogans demanding the immediate release of Awawdeh and all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Israel’s widely criticized administrative detention policy is intended to muzzle Palestinian political activists and curtail their freedom for as long as possible.

Despite his critical health condition, Palestinian detainee Khalil Awawdeh, 40, has been on hunger strike for 153 days in protest of his prolonged administrative detention without charge or trial by the Israeli occupation authorities.

Awawdeh, from the town of Idna in the southern West Bank district of Hebron, broke a 111-day fast last month after being reassured by Israeli prison authorities that his administrative detention would not be renewed, but he resumed the hunger strike a week later after the occupation authorities reneged on their promise not to end his unfair detention order.

On Thursday, the Israeli military court of Ofer allowed his lawyer and a physician to visit him for the first time in order to prepare a medical report about his health condition and submit it before the court next Sunday to look into his release.

Awawdeh, who is held in the Ramla Prison, is currently suffering from severe joint pains, headaches, severe dizziness, and blurred vision. He is also unable to walk and moves only in a wheelchair.

The father of four has been in jail since 27 December 2021, and has been placed in administrative detention, without charge or trial, ever since.

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 over 680 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.

Amnesty International, has described Israel’s administrative detention policy as a “cruel, unjust practice which helps maintain Israel’s system of apartheid against Palestinians.”