From a leaked video just days ago, the family of the Palestinian prisoner Maher Al-Akhras (49 years) knew his latest health conditions, after 65 days of a continuous hunger strike to refuse his administrative detention, and they realized that a great danger was threatening his life in the Israeli Kaplan Hospital, where he has been for a few weeks.
Since the 27th of last July, the Al-Akhrass prisoner - who comes from the village of Silat Al-Dhahr, the district of Jenin, in the northern West Bank - announced to his family and the occupation soldiers who came to arrest him that he had been on hunger strike since that moment, and that nothing required his arrest other than seducing him and harassing him.
Also from the video, Taghreed Al-Akhras (Umm Islam) extracted a picture of her captive husband, and printed many copies and posters to accompany her during the activities and rallies of solidarity with him, despite her lack of it. She is a living witness to the last suffering of her captive husband who lost - according to her saying - "more than half Weighed by the strike. "
Neither the wife nor any of the family of the mute prisoner knew the details of his health conditions before this video, which was said to have been leaked after the Israeli occupation’s decision to freeze the administrative detention of the mute prisoner at only 4 months, but she was and still feels a great danger to his life, even if they pretended that they “have reduced” The military guard, and removed the handcuffs and shackles from his hands inside the hospital. "
The wife of the prisoner Maher extracted a picture from a leaked video of her husband showing his health conditions under arrest (Al-Jazeera)
Serious deterioration
In the video, the mute prisoner appeared in the video, speaking in a low voice and emaciated body, to tell about his poor health and the intransigence of the occupation to release him despite this, and said that freezing the administrative decision is nothing but an Israeli "trick" to end the strike, and that this will not deceive him while he is continuing his strike.
Since his arrest, Israel has prevented Umm Islam or any of her sons from meeting their father in prison or even in the hospital, and visits to his lawyer were limited to two or 3 times only, and after a month or more of his arrest.
In her version of Al-Jazeera Net, she says that her husband was subjected to solitary confinement and abuse by transferring him between several prisons, especially the Ramle prison clinic, where sick prisoners are in "catastrophic" health and service conditions.
She adds that he suffers from "very poor" detention conditions, and that he was deprived of his basic rights to enter the toilet, "and cameras were placed to monitor him where he was arrested."
This is not surprising. The whole arrest and from the first moment the occupation aimed at humiliating the mute prisoner and disturbing his life, so that a high-ranking officer called the soldiers at the moment of his arrest and told him that he would disturb his life and destroy it economically. Another insistence to strike.
It is ironic about the arrest of al-Akhras that he was the one who demanded the occupation authorities to investigate him, as he was confident that he did not do anything to disturb the occupation, but they refused that and transferred him to administrative detention without trial, and prevented his visit in a clear punitive measure.
In its prisons, Israel arrests more than 4 thousand Palestinians, including about 350 prisoners, in administrative detention, which is described as the worst and most arrogant type of detention, as the case file remains "secret", and accusations are made to the prisoners unfamiliar and without knowledge, and there is no time limit for the period of detention that may be renewed By a last-minute military decision without a trial and without the prisoner's knowledge.
"If it were a mountain, it would collapse."
In her home, Umm Islam awaits next to Al Hajjah Khayriyah Al Akhras, Maher's mother, for any news that comes to them about their captive son, and they live with unprecedented anxiety over him, especially as he suffers from high blood pressure, and that the strike may increase his disease or damage to his internal organs.
Khayriah, 72, does not cease to pray for her son to be fixed while holding her prayer beads, but she does not hide her fear for him, and says, "If it were a mountain, it would collapse, and his body would not bear more than that."
Despite the decision to freeze his detention, the mute prisoner refuses to allow the Israeli medical authorities to examine or treat him, and confirms that this will not be until after obtaining an official decision to actually release him, and this according to his wife "to prevent his arrest again, and make this the goal of every new Israeli officer in the area." Especially since her captive husband is busy on his cow farm, far from people.
The series of detention of the al-Akhras prisoner began in 1989 and is over after, the last of it less than a year ago, and he spent 5 years in his arrests, which are mostly described as administrative.
Even if the mute prisoner is the only one who is being struck now to stop the occupation's violations against him, yet a state of boil prevails in the prisons of the occupation among all the prisoners, especially in light of the recent occupation measures against them during the Corona pandemic that the occupation volunteered to put pressure on them.
Hajjah Khayriyah The mother of the captive Maher al-Akhras awaits with fear and heart the release of her son on hunger strike (Al-Jazeera)
An explosion prospect
Amani Sarajneh, spokeswoman for the Palestinian Prisoners Club, says that the health conditions of prisoners are absent, especially with regard to Corona, in light of the occupation’s restriction of information and withholding it from them as human rights and legal bodies concerned with the affairs of prisoners, and despite this, they recorded the infection of 31 prisoners with the Coronavirus “caused by transfers between prisoners, and recent arrests. ".
In her interview with Al-Jazeera Net, she added that the occupation measures during Corona exacerbated the poor living conditions of the prisoners, and used the virus to punish and abuse them, as it placed them in double isolation and stopped visits to their families and communicating with their lawyers, and "fair trials" were absent for them, so that it reduced their daily expenses through the "canteen It limited their purchase of cleaning supplies and sterilizers.
She pointed out that detention centers such as Hawara and Etzion lack the minimum conditions as detention centers, where prisoners are held together in groups without the minimum hygiene or prevention elements, in addition to the fact that the occupation authorities have transferred sections inside prisons as quarantine centers, which are cells to isolate prisoners, not to quarantine them. ".
Minister Qadri Abu Bakr - head of the Prisoners' Affairs Authority - had warned in a statement about the "explosion of prisons" due to the state of boil that the prisoners are experiencing, especially after the closure of the "canteen" account, preventing their families from visiting them and transferring money to them, and said that they would start escalating steps between them. Hunger strike.
The strike of the prisoner Maher Al-Akhras may lead to only two things, testimony or freedom, and this is what the prisoner himself and his family realize, from which the concerns of anxiety and fear remain, so that his message remains one that with his empty stomachs it constitutes "a victory for every prisoner and a spark for their liberation from the prisons of the occupation."