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Photo:
Khader Adnan with his daughters in the West Bank village of Arraba, near Jenin, April 18, 2012. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org) Published by
972Mag and IMEMC News

Khader Adnan celebrates his release from an Israeli prison in the West Bank. July 12, 2015. Credit: AP Published by Haaretz
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Khader Adnan, who passed away in jail following an 86-day hunger strike, is the first Palestinian prisoner to die in such conditions since the 1980s.

by Oren Ziv for 972Mag
May 2, 2023

Khader Adnan, a Palestinian security prisoner who died early Tuesday morning after an 86-day hunger strike, was an icon of the struggle to resist Israel’s carceral policies and administrative detention. Now, after becoming the first Palestinian prisoner to die while on hunger strike since the 1980s, when five prisoners died as a result of Israeli force-feeding, Adnan’s status as a Palestinian symbol is only set to grow.

Adnan had been in prison since February, and launched his hunger strike shortly after his arrest. He was admitted to a prison clinic in the city of Ramle, and the Israel Prison Service (IPS) refused his repeated requests to be transferred to a hospital due to his medical condition. His wife, Randa Adnan, was prevented from visiting him throughout the entire period.

According to an IPS statement released Tuesday morning, “the detainee, who refused to undergo medical tests and receive medical treatment, was found unconscious in his cell. CPR was performed on him, after which he was transferred to Shamir Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.”

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Palestinian Detainee Khader Adnan Dies on Day 87 of Hunger Strike

by IMEMC News
May 2, 2023

Palestinian political prisoner Khader Adnan, 45, became the first Palestinian to die in a hunger strike protesting the Israeli occupation and illegal detention of thousands of Palestinian civilians.

Khader Adnan, from Arraba town, southwest of the northern West Bank city of Jenin, was born on March 24, 1978, and was a married father of nine children. He held a bachelor’s degree in economic mathematics.

Adnan’s death came on the 87th day of a hunger strike which he began on February 5th, the day Israeli soldiers abducted him.

This was the 12th time Adnan had been abducted and imprisoned by Israeli forces. He spent a total of eight years of his life behind bars in Israeli military prisons — most of that time in so-called ‘administrative detention’, an illegal practice used by Israeli martial authorities to hold Palestinians for extended periods without any charges.

Israeli authorities refused to allow Khader Adnan’s wife and children to see him, even as his health condition deteriorated severely in his last days, and refused the repeated requests by Adnan’s lawyer to have him transferred out of the notoriously ill-equipped Ramla Prison clinic into a civilian hospital.

Khader Adnan was considered one of the most prominent Palestinian political prisoners. He went on extended hunger strikes on five previous occasions – in 2004 for 25 days, in 2012 for 66 days, in 2015 for 56 days, in 2018 for 58 days, and in 2021 for 25 days. These repeated hunger strikes caused severe health impacts, as the body’s internal organs begin to fail after the first two weeks of a hunger strike.

Although Israeli authorities considered Adnan to be a “security threat”, they had never filed official charges against him, and held him in prison repeatedly without any charges.

Palestinian political leaders say that Adnan was targeted because of his vocal and steadfast opposition to the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian land — a military occupation that is considered illegal under international law and has been condemned by multiple United Nations resolutions.

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society issued a statement that “Adnan, through his six hunger strikes and martyrdom, “carried the voice of the prisoners to all parts of the world, and was able, with each hunger strike, to gain his freedom. This time, the Israeli occupation made the decision to assassinate him.”

With the death of Khader Adnan, the number of Palestinian prisoners who died in Israeli custody since 1967 has risen to 236, of whom 75 were the result of the crime of deliberate medical negligence.

This is in addition to hundreds who died months or years after they were released, due to health conditions and illness they developed in prison without receiving professional medical treatment.

While Israel claimed Adnan “refused to undergo medical tests and receive treatment”, his lawyer Jamil Al-Khatib accused Israel of deliberate medical negligence and said that he had repeatedly requested that Israeli authorities move Adnan to a civilian hospital in Israel, but the request was denied by the Israeli Prison Authority.

The Palestinians declared a general strike across the occupied territory and called for massive processions to condemn Adnan’s death, the ongoing Israeli crimes and violations.

As for the number of prisoners who died in captivity, but whose bodies are being held by Israeli authorities, there are now 13: Anis Doula, who died in Ashkelon prison in 1980, Aziz Owaisat since 2018, Fares Baroud, Nassar Taqatqa, Bassam Al-Sayeh, who died in 2019, Saadi Al-Gharabli, and Kamal Abu Wa’ar, who died in 2020, Sami Al-Amour, who died in 2021, Daoud Al-Zubaidi, Nasser Abu Hamid and Mohammad Maher Turkman, who died in 2022 , the detainee Wadih Abu Ramoz, who died in an Israeli occupation hospital on January 28, 2023, and Khader Adnan, who succumbed in his cell in the Ramla prison clinic on May 2, 2023.

The death of Khader Adnan has been compared to that of the Irish nationalist political prisoner Bobby Sands, who died after 66 days on hunger strike in 1981.

According to the Bobby Sands Foundation, he was an Irish republican, an IRA Volunteer and a key figure in the fight against British imperialism in the north of Ireland during the 1970s and early 1980s.

He came to public prominence during the 1981 hunger strike when he led the protest by men in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh and women in Armagh Jail who sought political prisoner status. Bobby endured years of solitary confinement and beatings. During his imprisonment he was elected MP for the constituency of Fermanagh and South Tyrone.

Bobby began his hunger strike on 1st March 1981 and died after sixty-six days on the 5th May 1981. In the aftermath of his death he became an international figure that inspires not only Irish republicans in their pursuit of freedom from British rule, but people around the world in the fight for their rights.
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Palestinian Prisoner Dies in Israeli Detention After 86-day Hunger Strike

‘Khader Adnan has been executed in cold blood,’ the Prisoners Association in Gaza said in response

by Jack Khoury for Haaretz, and Reuters
May 2, 2023

Sheikh Khader Adnan, a senior member of Islamic Jihad in the northern West Bank, died Tuesday after an 86-day hunger strike.

The Israel Prison Services said that Adnan was found unconscious in his cell at the Nitzan detention facility and that he was declared dead at Assaf Harofeh Hospital.

Adnan, 45, was arrested by Israeli security forces in February and charged with terror-related offences. He had been arrested several times in the past and launched hunger strikes to protest his detention.

Israel said Adnan "refused to undergo medical tests and receive medical treatment."

"Khader Adnan has been executed in cold blood," WAED Prisoners Association in Gaza said in response.

Islamic Jihad called for a general strike in Gaza and the West Bank to protest Adnan's death.

Israel accused Adnan of supporting terror, affiliation with a terror group and incitement. He had been in and out of detention and had undertaken five hunger strikes since 2004.
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The Disgraceful Detention and Death of Palestinian Hunger-striker Khader Adnan

Haaretz Editorial
May 4, 2023

Khader Adnan was a political activist in Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Shin Bet security service arrested him for the first time nearly 20 years ago, and since then it arrested him and threw him into prison 12 times, nearly always without charges or trial. He undertook his first hunger strike in an Israeli prison in 2000, repeating it six times over the years until his death this week. Nine years of his life were stolen from him in the effort to break his spirit, although he was never prosecuted for serious security offenses.

In other words, Adnan was a political prisoner, an opponent of the occupation, like more than 1,000 Palestinians currently held in Israeli prisons without charges.

This alarming figure arouses no interest in Israel, just like Adnan’s hunger strike, which ended in his death after 86 days. While Israel is fighting for its democracy, with many people going out to demonstrate enthusiastically and impressively against the dangers that threaten it, one of the most undemocratic practices to take place here is ignored almost completely: so-called administrative detention, incarceration without trial or charges. No democracy in the world has such a thing. Israel should not have such a thing.

Adnan chose to fight his frequent arrests the hard way. He did so on his own, hoping to be rescued from death, as he did on all his previous hunger strikes.

This time Israel let him die in prison, without hospitalizing him in an effort to save his life, in part due to the lack of public interest in him and his strike. Apart from the inhumanity of this step, there is also no wisdom in it, and residents of southern Israel were forced to endure another heavy rocket attack on account of Adnan’s unnecessary, lamentable death.

Adnan lost a fight that was designed to break his spirit and his body. Israel lost even more: As long as the disgrace of administrative detention persists, and in such numbers, a heavy shadow is cast on Israel’s democratic character and on its judiciary, which allows and authorizes the practice. It would be wise to take advantage of the current moment, when the Israel Police are under public scrutiny, to end the phenomenon of administrative detention, which is practiced in the state’s dark backyard, the yard of the occupation.

The above article is Haaretz’s lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.