Israel ‘deliberately trying to kill Palestinian hunger strikers’

The Palestinian Committee of Prisoners’ Affairs says the Tel Aviv regime purposefully seeks to kill Palestinian hunger strikers who are refusing to take their food portions in protest against their administrative detention in Israeli jails.

Issa Qaraqe, the head of the rights group, said in a Thursday statement that Israeli authorities have “deliberately” sought to kill the Palestinian protesters by allowing their health condition to deteriorate, and forcing them into “difficult circumstances” at the same time.

Qaraqe added that 20-year-old Anas Ibrahim Shadid and Ahmad Abu Farah, 29, both residents of the southern occupied West Bank city of Surif, have gone without food for 76 and 77 days, respectively.

More than 6,500 Palestinians are reportedly held at Israeli jails. Hundreds of the inmates have apparently been incarcerated under the practice of administrative detention, which is a policy under which Palestinian inmates are kept in Israeli detention facilities without trial or charge.

Some Palestinian prisoners have been held in administrative detention for up to eleven years.

The Palestinian inmates regularly hold hunger strikes in protest at the administrative detention policy and their harsh prison conditions.