Crescent International
Reduced to skeleton, Palestinian prisoner Khalil Awawdeh ended his nearly six-month-long hunger strike on August 31 after Israel agreed to his release.
He is set to be released from detention on October 2, according to the Prisoner Support and Human Rights Office (Addameer) and his lawyer Ahlam Haddad.
The 40-year-old Awawdeh will remain in hospital for treatment until he recovers and is able to walk, according to his lawyer as well as Addameer.
Th Prisoner support group also added that his condition requires “long-term care”.
According to Ms. Haddad, Awawdeh had subsisted only on water for months and warned last week that he could “die at any moment” after losing so much weight.
He weighs less than 38 kilograms, al-Mayedeen reported, quoting his wife.
Arrested in December 2021 from his home in Idhna village, near al-Khalil (Hebron) in the Israeli-Occupied West Bank, he launched the hunger strike shortly after being detained.
It was to protest his illegal detention without charge or trial.
The zionists describe this illegal practice as “administrative detention”.
The detainee is not informed of what the charges against him/her are or the evidence for such charges.
There is no trial and hence no recourse to defence or appeal.
Detainees are initially held for six months but it is routinely extended every six months by a military court.
This lawless practice has gone on for decades and detainees can be held for years.
Awawdeh was protesting against this barbaric practice through his hunger strike and to draw international attention to it.
Clearly, it has been at an enormous personal cost, bringing him to the verge of death.
He may never fully recover the damage his internal organs may have suffered.
Further, given zionist Israel’s duplicitous nature, this deal may still fall through.
After all, the last time such a deal was announced, Israel reneged on it soon thereafter.
In June, Awawdeh took vitamins during two weeks when he thought his case was being resolved.
The zionists reneged on that deal.
Hours after nearly 1,000 Palestinian prisoners went on hunger strike today, they announced its suspension after Israeli prison authorities acquiesced to their demands.
The Palestinian detainees were demanding reversal of harsh measures imposed across prisons for months.
The Supreme National Emergency Committee, which manages the prisoners’ protests, said in a statement that Israel “realised that the prisoners are ready to pay every price for their dignity and rights.”
The punitive measures included limiting yard time, increased restrictions on prisoners serving long sentences—especially those serving life sentences who are put in solitary confinement—and the constant transfer of prisoners between prison facilities, which leads to a state of instability inside jails.
