French-Palestinian human rights lawyer Salah Hamouri, who has been imprisoned without charge by Israeli authorities for six months, has gone on hunger strike to protest his detention.
37-year-old Hamouri, has been in prison since March 2022, in administrative detention without charge.
Hamouri is among 30 Palestinian detainees held in administrative detention who went on hunger strike on Sunday, September 25, to protest against the controversial measure.
“We will continue with our struggle, knowing what awaits us of repression, abuse, isolation, confiscation of our clothes and pictures of our children, thrown into concrete cells devoid of everything, except for our bodies and our pain,” the prisoners said in a statement declaring their hunger strike.
28 of the striking detainees were isolated in four rooms in Ofer prison, while human rights detainee Salah Hamouri was isolated in the cells of Hadarim prison, and Ghassan Zawahra was isolated in the cells of the Negev prison.
The #Justice for Salah campaign said, on Wednesday, that Hammouri, who is being held in the Hadrami High Security Prison, has been transferred to solitary confinement in a 2-by-2-square-meter cell without windows and a 10-cm mattress.
The Israeli forces arrested Hamouri on March 7, 2022, after storming his house in the town of Kafr Aqab, north of Jerusalem, and transferred him to administrative detention for a period of three months, and a day before his release date, they renewed his administrative detention in June 2022.
Hamouri is a field researcher at Addameer. It is noteworthy that he, spent more than nine years in detention, at intervals.
The first was in 2001 for a period of five months, and in 2004 the occupation authorities transferred him to administrative detention for a period of four months, then he was arrested for seven years in 2005, and in 2017, the occupation authorities re-arrested him administratively for a period of thirteen months, and also prevented him from entering the West Bank for two years.
Several years ago, the occupation expelled his wife, who was seven months pregnant, to France, after she was detained for three days at the airport, during her return to Jerusalem.
She was deported back to France and received a 10-year ban despite having a valid year-long multiple-entry work visa.
The couple now has a six-year-old son and a 16-month-old daughter, who live in France.
In October 2021, the Attorney General and the Minister of the Occupation’s Judiciary approved the decision to withdraw Hammouri’s identity card, and he was denied residency in Jerusalem.
In November 2021, Front Line Defenders revealed the hacking of 6 devices of employees working in Palestinian human rights institutions, using the “Pegasus” spyware, including Hamouri, and he is transferred in several prisons and is currently in Hadarim prison.
The Israeli Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case of withdrawing the identity of the Jerusalemite activist Hamouri in February 2023.
In August, the Israeli army closed seven Palestinian NGOs in the occupied West Bank, after they were classified as “terrorist organisations,” including Addameer, in which Hammouri works.
Administrative detention is a controversial measure that allows the Jewish state to imprison people without charge for a renewable period of six months.
It is noteworthy that the number of administrative detainees exceeded 730, including at least 6 minors and two female prisoners, and the largest number of them are in the Negev and Ofer prisons, and this percentage is the highest since the popular uprising in 2015.
From 2015 to this year, the occupation authorities issued more than 9,500 administrative detention orders, and since the beginning of this year 2022, they have issued about 1,365 administrative detention orders, and the highest percentage of administrative detention orders was issued last August, which amounted to 272.
From late 2011 until the end of this year, prisoners and detainees carried out more than 400 individual strikes, most of which were against administrative detention.
It noteworthy that more than 80 per cent of administrative detainees are former detainees who have been subjected to administrative detention many times, among them the elderly, sick and children.
