Alwaght- Palestinian hunger striker Khalil Awawdeh Jailed in Israeli prison is in critical condition and could die at any moment from a range of maladies, a doctor who has examined him said Monday after the occupying regime's High Court of Justice rejected an appeal to release him.
The 40-year-old Palestinian man has been on a hunger strike since March to protest his so-called administrative detention, which allows the regime to hold prisoners without charge practically indefinitely.
Awawdeh has been on the hunger strike for 170 days, subsisting only on water. Photos of Awawdeh taken by his lawyer on Friday showed him emaciated and lying in a hospital bed.
Dr. Lina Qasem-Hassan, a doctor with Physicians for Human Rights who visited Awadeh earlier this month, said he was extremely thin and suffering from malnutrition.
She said there are signs of neurological damage, with symptoms like memory loss, an inability to concentrate, involuntary eye movement and a near loss of vision. She said there was a risk of heart failure or kidney failure at any time.
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“There is no doubt there is a risk for his life,” she said.
A military court on Friday temporarily suspended the detention of Khalil Awawdeh to allow him to receive medical care at an Israeli hospital with no restrictions but said he would be rearrested once his condition was better and he could return to jail.
His lawyer, Ahlam Haddad, submitted an appeal last week to the High Court of Justice to have his client’s detention revoked completely, but it was rejected on Sunday.
In its ruling, the top court said it had examined classified security information about Awawdeh and determined there was “solid and strong justification for the decision of administrative detention.”
Haddad said she would file another request for his release as soon as his condition worsens. “This is the equation, a difficult equation,” she said.
Thousands of Palestinians are held in Israeli jails. Human rights organizations say Israel violates all the rights and freedoms granted to prisoners by the Geneva Convention. They say administrative detention violates the right to due process since the evidence is withheld from prisoners while they are held for lengthy periods without being charged, tried, or convicted.
Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes in an attempt to express outrage at the detentions. Israeli jail authorities keep Palestinian prisoners under deplorable conditions without proper hygienic standards. Palestinian inmates have also been subject to systematic torture, harassment, and repression.
