Palestinian prisoner and prominent activist Sheikh Khader Adnan has been on an open-ended hunger strike for the 74th day in a row in protest against his detention without charge or trial in Israeli occupation prisons.
The Palestinian Priosner’s Society (PPS) said the senior member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group Khader Adnan has been on an open-ended hunger strike for 74 consecutive days.
The PPS noted that Adnan suffers from very serious health symptoms, including frequent vomiting of blood, severe weakness and emaciation, frequent loss of consciousness, difficulty in speaking, movement, and sleep, difficulty in concentrating and severe pain all over his body. Recently, he even has had a very hard time drinking water.
Andan has been recently moved to the Ramla Prison Clinic due to his critical condition.
“My husband is dying and the Israeli prison administration refuses to transfer him to a civilian hospital,” Adnan’s wife said in a press conference in Ramallah on Wednesday. “Rather, it keeps him in Ramla prison, which lacks the minimum health facilities. We have asked more than once to transfer him to a hospital, but the request is always denied.”
Adnan, a former Palestinian prisoner, was arrested by Israeli forces during a military raid on February 5 on his family home in Arraba village, southwest of Jenin.
He entered the hunger strike from the first moment of his arrest in protest against Israel’s detention of him.
Adnan has been imprisoned at least 11 times since 2004 and was a spokesperson for Palestinian prisoners inside Israeli prisons. He was last freed from an Israeli prison in 2021 after 25 days of detention.
Adnan, seen by many Palestinians as a symbol of resistance, went on hunger strike four times during detention, including one stretch that lasted 67 days.
On the day of his arrest, Israeli forces said seven Palestinians were arrested but did not name Adnan and did not specify the charges against them.
Adnan launched his first hunger strike, which lasted 25 days, in 2004 to protest being held in administrative detention, a controversial practice that allows Israeli occupation to detain Palestinians without charge for six-month periods. These detention periods can be renewed indefinitely and Palestinian detainees can spend years in prison without being charged.
Adnan’s 67-day hunger strike in 2012 inspired a wave of Palestinian prisoners held under administrative detention to join him.
Mohammed Adnan, Adnan’s brother, said during the press conference that a lawyer from the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association had visited Adnan in the Ramla Prison Clinic on Tuesday. The lawyer updated the family on his health condition.
“In addition to frequent fainting, my brother suffers from hearing and vision impairment, severe pressure in the chest, spasms all over his body, and vomiting of yellow matter,” Mohammed Adnan said.
About a week ago, Adnan fainted, fell to the ground, and hit his head and lower shoulder. He remained lying on the ground for a long time without help from any guards, despite the presence of surveillance cameras in his cell, the lawyer told the family.
“That is why we demand that he be transferred to a civilian hospital. On top of that, the jailers deliberately disturb him and deprive him of sleep by storming his cell every half hour and keeping the light shining in it,” Mohammed Adnan said.
“Israel has so far refused to allow me, his wife, and his nine children to visit him, under the pretext of a security ban.”
Adnan is considered a prominent Islamic Jihad leader in the occupied West Bank. He owns a bakery in his hometown and has nine children. He is active in his support of Palestinian prisoners and regularly participates in events held to support them.
His wife appealed to various human rights organizations, especially international ones, to help draw attention to his case and put pressure on Israeli occupation to release him “before it is too late”.
Qaddoura Fares, head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, said that ‘Israel’ was deliberately ignoring Adnan’s demands to be released in order to lengthen his hunger strike, in the hope that it would act as a deterrent to other Palestinian prisoners.
