Days of Palestine – Ramallah
Dalal Awawdeh, the wife of Palestinian prisoner Khalil Awawdeh, said today she was denied a badly needed visit to her terribly ill husband after 164 days of hunger strike in protest of his detention without charge or trial by the Israeli occupation authorities.
The wife told the official WAFA news agency that Israeli forces denied her entry into Israel via Tarqumia checkpoint in the south of the West Bank, claiming that her entry permit had expired the previous night. The husband is currently held in the Israeli hospital of Assaf HaRofeh.
She said her husband is in a terribly difficult health condition after 164 days of hunger strike, and that he has lost half of his weight and lost the ability to speak. However, she said her husband’s morale remains high and that he will not break his hunger strike before his administrative detention is terminated.
Awawdeh, 40, 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.
Two weeks ago, 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.
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.”
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