Ramallah - 

In the last message that reached his family 10 days ago, the prisoner Khalil Awawda, 40, said that he "continues in his open hunger strike to reach his freedom," and since that day until now, the family has not known anything about his health, and he has entered his 76th day. on strike.

His wife, Dalal Awawda, says that the occupation is deceiving by not allowing the lawyer to visit him, and by setting the date of the visits, he is transferred to the hospital, then returned to the Ramle prison clinic.

The wife who spoke to Al Jazeera Net in a worried, weeping voice, said that he had entered the slow death stage, and he was suffering from continuous vomiting of blood and damage to the nerves of the limbs, so he could no longer move or stand or even speak.

Awawda is one of the 660 administrative prisoners, according to the High Commission for the Follow-up of Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs, who chose to revolt over the decision of his administrative detention to fight an empty bowel battle, while the rest of them are facing this decision by boycotting the Israeli courts 137 days ago, and new escalatory steps.

These steps - according to the head of the High Commission for the Follow-up on the Affairs of Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners, Amin Shoman - that the prisoners will take inside their rooms and sections, by returning meals, knocking on doors and not coming to the number, in a message to the Prisons Authority that the next is greater and greater, and may lead to a clash with the administrative prisoners who are distributed over 3 Israeli prisons.

According to what Shoman told Al Jazeera Net, 70% of the administrative prisoners were renewed for administrative detention, in addition to dozens who were previously detained administratively for long periods, as is the case with Awawda.

President of the Palestinian Prisoners Club Qaddoura Fares: The effort made by the prisoners against this arrest is not enough (Al-Jazeera)

Years in Administrative Detention

Awawda spent years in renewed administrative detention in the past, which made him decide to strike as soon as he was transferred to administrative detention, as the wife says, "Administrative detention stole from Omar Khalil a lot and prevented him from practicing his normal life or completing his educational career. The first time he spent more than two years, then 3 years, and if he does not take this step, his administrative detention could extend for years as well.”

The insistence of the administrative prisoners to continue the struggle against this type of detention comes in light of the significant increase in their numbers, as the number of detainees increased in just one month, amid expectations of a further increase, according to the institutions that follow up on prisoners’ affairs.

The step that the administrative prisoners will take is to “declare disobedience” to prison laws, and not to comply with the orders of the Israeli prison administration and the jailers to comply with the number or go out to the squares, which creates tension inside the prisons, which the Israeli prison administration always seeks to avoid.

Shoman says that any measures taken by the prisoners can worry the prison administration, even if it brings it to the point of conflict with the administrative prisoners, especially since it did not respond during the previous period to their boycott of the three levels of the Israeli courts, and there were no positive results in the dialogues that take place between the prisoners’ administration and the Prisons Authority.

According to Schumann, what is currently required is "popular and official support at all levels. These steps could develop into the prisoners' entry into the open hunger strike battle."

Head of the High Commission for the Follow-up of Prisoners Affairs, Amin Shoman: 70% of the administrative prisoners were re-arrested administratively (Al-Jazeera)

The steps of the prisoners are not enough

Being satisfied with the efforts made by the prisoners against this arrest is not enough, according to the head of the Palestinian Prisoners Club, Qaddoura Fares, to force Israel, as an integrated system of the army, intelligence and political level, to reconsider this arrest.

Fares told Al Jazeera Net, "The prisoners are now the head of the movement and they set the spark and what is required to build on it. What prompts Israel to reconsider its positions is the popular situation on the ground, which is also reflected on the Palestinian political and international levels."

The prisoners’ taking these steps is due to the occupation’s persistence in implementing this detention, and this is evident from the large increase in the numbers, says Fares, and more than that, there is a tendency among some Knesset members who presented proposals to transform the British emergency law that Israel adopted in administrative detention into a law A civilian approved by the Knesset.

He continued, "The new decision proposal that we have seen includes the same provisions of British law, with the character changed from emergency to civil law."

According to a fact sheet published by the Addameer Foundation for Prisoners’ Care and Human Rights in 2020, the Israeli military laws related to administrative detention orders go back to the Mandate Emergency Law of 1945, during which the Israeli military commander relies on secret materials that neither the detainee nor his lawyer can view.

According to the Israeli military orders, the administrative detention order can be renewed unlimited times, as an administrative detention order is issued for a maximum renewable period of 6 months.

cover for failure

"Through these arrests, which rise with every event on the ground, Israel is trying to cover up its failure to contain the Palestinian street, and send a message to its citizens that it has something to do to preserve their security," Fares says.

Head of the Committee for the Families of Jerusalemite Prisoners and Detainees, Amjad Abu Asab, agrees with Fares’ interpretation of the high number of administrative prisoners, and says that most of the recent arrests that took place in Jerusalem, specifically in the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, targeted liberated and influential prisoners who were transferred to administrative detention.

In his interview with Al Jazeera Net, Abu Asab expected more administrative detention after the recent events in occupied Jerusalem, noting that during the blessed month of Ramadan, 15 detainees were transferred to administrative detention from the city of Jerusalem only.