On the eve of Prisoner’s Day, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) issued a statement on Sunday, April 16, stating that a jailed Palestinian, Khader Adnan, is in a critical state and needs immediate hospitalization. Adnan is currently on an indefinite hunger strike against his unlawful detention by the Israeli occupation forces.
Adnan (44) has completed 71 days of his hunger strike and is currently admitted in Israel’s notorious Ramla Prison Clinic, despite repeated appeals to shift him to a proper hospital. The PPS claimed that Adnan is already suffering from serious health issues and “Israel’s refusal to move him to a hospital aims at causing him chronic diseases that are difficult to treat later,” Wafa news agency reported.
Adnan has been arrested 12 times in the last 20 years and has spent altogether over eight years in Israeli administrative detention. He has been on hunger strike since the beginning of his present incarceration, in the first week of February. He was arrested from Arraba in the northern West Bank district of Jenin.
This is his sixth hunger strike and the longest so far.
Prisoner’s Day
Palestinians mark Prisoner’s Day every year on April 17 to express solidarity with their freedom fighters inside Israeli prison. According to a joint report published on the occasion, there are around 4,900 Palestinians inside different Israeli prisons, including 31 women and 160 children.
Most of them face widespread atrocities from the Israeli prison authorities, including denial of family meetings, restrictions on interactions with other prisoners, and torture, among others.
A large number of them (over 1,000) are administrative detainees, who, like Adnan, are kept in prison without any charge or trial for months and years together.
The joint report was published by various prison rights groups working in the occupied territories, including PPS and the Addameer prisoner support and human rights organization.
Palestinians have also planned mass rallies across the occupied territories on April 17 to mark the occasion.
According to the report, at least 23 of the Palestinian prisoners were arrested before the now-failed Oslo peace agreement that was signed in 1993. The oldest among the Palestinian prisoners is Mohammad al-Tous, who was arrested in 1985. Over 400 Palestinian prisoners have remained inside prisons for more than 20 years.
Israeli authorities are also holding the bodies of 12 Palestinian prisoners who died while in prison. The oldest among them died in prison in 1980, but his body has not been released by the Israeli prison authorities to his relatives.
According to the report, at least 700 of the Palestinian prisoners are ill, with at least 24 suffering from terminal diseases.
According to a statement issued by the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, Israel has detained a total of 800,000 Palestinians since the occupation in 1967, and successive Israeli governments have followed “discriminatory policies against Palestinian detainees.” The statement claims that discrimination has intensified since the coming of “the current racist Israeli occupation government.”
Increased hostilities
Palestinian prisoners have been experiencing increasing oppression since the ultra right-wing government led by Benjamin Netanyahu came to power in November last year, with extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir as minister in charge of prisons.
The majority of the Palestinian prisoners took to weeks-long mass action earlier this year demanding reversal of some of the draconian policies imposed against them by Ben-Gvir’s ministry, which included withdrawal of prisoners’ limited right to visitation from Knesset members, restrictions on their movement inside prisons, increased security checks, and withdrawal or limitation on some basic amenities such as shower times, among others.
Marking the occasion of Prisoner’s Day, Palestinian resistance group Hamas issued a statement expressing their commitment to fight for the release of prisoners. “We will spare no efforts for the sake of their freedom; we will not rest until we restore the freedom of the Palestinian detainees who have sacrificed their lives to liberate their homeland and people,” the Hamas statement read.
Palestinian Foreign and Expatriate Ministry’ statement also claimed that the detainees’ cause is central to their fight against Israeli occupation. It reaffirmed “that their freedom is a fundamental part of the freedom of the Palestinian people.”
