Hunger-striking Palestinian prisoner cannot move anymore, lawyer says

Hunger-striking Palestinian inmate Hisham Abu Hawwash cannot move anymore, his lawyer says, nearly 130 days after the prisoner began his hunger strike in protest at his indefinite, unfair and unexplained imprisonment by Israel. 

Jawad Boulus, Abu Hawwash’s lawyer, said on Thursday that his client, who has been on hunger strike for the past 129 days, has lost his ability to move, and is suffering from speaking difficulty, Palestine’s official Wafa news agency reported.

He warned that although Abu Hawwash is in critical condition and in dire need for medical follow-up and hospitalization, the Israel Prison Service (IPS) has kept him in prison and refused to move him to hospital for due treatment.

“Despite the critical health condition of Abu Hawwash, the IPS is still rejecting to move him to a civil hospital, and is seemingly aiming to impose this as a reality in the issue of the hunger-strikers,” said Boulus in a statement shared by the Palestinian Prisoners' Society (PPS).

“The demand to move Abu Hawwash to hospital requires additional efforts. The IPS used to move the [hunger-striking] prisoners to a civil hospital after some time into their hunger strike, [but] today it deliberately keeps them in prison,” the lawyer added.

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Boulus also noted that moving hunger-striking prisoners to a civil hospital has become a condition for the court to suspend the administrative detention, which is a sort of imprisonment without trial or charge.

Earlier this month, the Prisoners and Ex-prisoners Affairs Authority said that Abu Hawwash was in “tragic condition.” The rights group said the 40-year-old inmate suffers from weakness in the bones and muscles, a sharp weight loss, and sharp pains all over his body.

He has also become unable to move or to speak, but Israeli courts continue to reject his release appeals, it added.

Abu Hawwash's family has already warned that he may die any moment as a result of his prolonged hunger strike, calling for urgent action to save his life before it is too late.

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Abu Hawwash is one of the four prisoners who went on extended hunger strikes against their detention without charge. The other prisoners were Kayed Fasfous, Ayyad al-Harimi, and Lo’ai al-Ashqar.

Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes in an attempt to express their outrage at their detention.

More than 7,000 Palestinians are reportedly held in Israeli jails. Hundreds of them have apparently been incarcerated under the "administrative detention". Some prisoners have been held in administrative detention for up to 11 years.

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