Khader Adnan refuses medical tests, continues strike

Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan, 37, continues his open hunger-strike that he started 12 days ago, demanding an end to his administrative detention by Israel, the Palestinian Prisoner's Society says. Adnan told a PPS lawyer, who visited him in solitary confinement in the Israeli HaDarim jail, that the Israeli Prisons Services began imposing sanctions on him since the first day of his strike. Sanctions have included sending him to solitary confinement, preventing him from going out to the jail's yard, receiving a radio or a newspaper, and having a pen or a writing book. Adnan said that he refuses to take medical tests or any vitamins, and is currently only drinking water. His main goal is to prevent Israel from tarnishing the achievement of prisoners who secured their freedom by going on hunger strikes in the past, only to be rearrested by military forces, he wrote in a letter earlier this week.

Adnan was detained on July 8, 2014 and sentenced to administrative detention for the 10th time in his life. In 2012, Adnan's 66-day hunger strike in an Israeli prison in 2012 inspired hundreds of prisoners to take on Israel's policy of holding detainees without charge. According to the Palestinian Prisoner's Center for Studies, Israeli authorities have issued over 300 administrative detention orders for Palestinians since the beginning of 2015, six times as many as were issued in the same period the previous year. The statistics suggests a massive increase in Israel's incarceration of Palestinians without charge or trial despite repeated promises to limit the practice in line with international norms.

From Ma'an News Agency, May 16