Two Palestinian captives embark on hunger strike

Omar Shami, 18, from the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, was detained by the Israeli occupation army in April 2020, and was sentenced to a year in prison. He was supposed to be released in April 2021, but was astonished that an Israeli court ruled that he would stay in prison for an additional four months without charge or trial.

Meantime, Yousef Imad Amer, 28, also from the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, started a hunger strike today in protest of an Israeli court's ruling ordering him to serve four months in prison without a charge or trial. He has been in prison since June 2020, and was supposed to be released yesterday.

Amer is a former prisoner in Israeli jails, and has served a total of 8 years in prison.

Israel's widely condemned practice of administrative detention allows the detention of Palestinians without charge or trial for renewable intervals ranging between three and six months based on undisclosed evidence that even a detainee’s lawyer is barred from viewing.

Amnesty International has once described Israel’s use of administrative detention as a “bankrupt tactic” and has long called on Israel to bring its use to an end.

Palestinian captives have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes as a way to protest their illegal administrative detention and to demand an end to this policy, which violates international law.