Two Palestinians detained in an Israeli jail have been on hunger strike for almost eight days, in protest of administrative detention and medical negligence, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS). An attorney with PPS told WAFA that Khere Daraghmeh, an ailing prisoner from the West Bank town of Tubas, has been on hunger strike against Israel’s medical negligence towards him since July 27; while Daraghmeh’s health requires an immediate surgery in his lower abdomen, prison authorities gave him a surgery appointment slated for two years from now.
Medical negligence has been widely reported as a systematic policy by the Israeli Prison Service.
Meanwhile, detainee Abdul-Majid Khderat, also from Tubas, entered his third day in hunger strike against administrative detention, without charge or trial.
Administrative detention and medical negligence in Israeli jails have been largely the main drive behind hunger strikes by Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
Under administrative detention, prisoners are held without charge or trial and for an indefinite and renewable period of time.
The use of administrative detention dates from the “emergency laws” of the British colonial era in Palestine. Israel uses administrative detention routinely as a form of collective punishment and mass detention of Palestinians, and frequently uses administrative detention when it fails to obtain confessions in interrogations of Palestinian detainees.
According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, “Israel’s use of administrative detention blatantly violates the restrictions of international law. Israel carries it out in a highly classified manner that denies detainees the possibility of mounting a proper defense. Moreover, the detention has no upper time limit.”
Some 5,442 Palestinian security detainees and prisoners are currently held in Israeli prisons, 350 of them from the Gaza Strip, according to B’Tselem.
See also: Israeli Knesset Approves Amendment Allowing Force-feeding of Prisoners on Hunger Strike
