Palestinian administrative detainee Khader Adnan died in an Israeli prison on Tuesday, May 2. He had launched a hunger strike nearly three months ago to protest his illegal arrest and administrative detention. The Israeli prison service said that they found him unconscious in his prison cell on Tuesday morning, after which he was rushed to hospital where attempts to revive him failed. It has been announced that residents in the Palestinian city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank will stage a one-day general strike to protest his custodial death.
Adnan, a senior member of the resistance group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), embarked on his 87-day-long hunger strike after he was arrested on February 5 by the Israeli security forces. According to reports, during a recent court hearing, Adnan demanded that Israeli authorities release him on bail, which was refused, resulting in him continuing his hunger strike. The 44-year-old father of nine, hailing from the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, had a number of charges against him, including “involvement in terrorist activities”, “incitement”, and “belonging to a terrorist group.” In the past, he had resorted to similar hunger strikes to protest his arbitrary arrests and detention by the Israeli authorities. Since 2004, he had been on five hunger strikes, including a 67-day strike in 2021 and a 55-day strike in 2015. Overall, he had faced arrest 12 times and had spent approximately eight years in prison, under administrative detention for a majority of that period.
The illegal policy of administrative detention allows Israel to keep Palestinians in prison without charge or trial for prolonged periods of time. According to reports, Israel is currently detaining more than 1000 Palestinians prisoners under this policy, the highest such figure since 2003.
Responding to his death, the PIJ in a statement said that “our fight is continuing and the enemy will realize once again that its crimes will not pass without a response. Resistance will continue by all might and determination.”
The Gaza-based WAED prisoners’ association deemed the killing “execution in cold blood.” Well-known Palestinian political activist and founder of BDS (Boycott, Divestment Sanctions) Mustafa Barghouti called his death an “assassination because the Israeli government knew very well, and its military courts, that a person who is on hunger strike for 87 days, who had not received any kind of medical care, could die at any moment.”
Notably, in the days and weeks leading up to his death, there were numerous repeated appeals made by his family, rights groups, and doctors about his rapidly deteriorating health condition and the risk of imminent death, but they were ignored by Israeli authorities.
