Hunger Strikes Under Israeli Occupation

By Amal Shukr

Throughout history, prisoners around the world have undertaken hunger strikes to protest both the legal basis of their imprisonment and prison conditions, largely as an effort to spark a statewide policy change or uproot a system of injustice.[1] The differentiating factor of a hunger strike compared to any other protest is that it is the protester—not the target—who suffers from the action, as hunger strikers, in undergoing extended periods of fasting, face malnourishment, diminishment of mental and physical faculties, and even death.[2] The power in a hunger strike then rests not on the fact that it results in a direct conflict with the aimed target, but on its indirect moral appeal to public sentiment.[3] Thus, public involvement contributes to the success of a hunger strike.[4]

 While some may think that hunger strikes are relics of the past, reminiscent of efforts by Mahatma Gandhi and American suffragettes, hunger striking is a common means of protest by Palestinian prisoners today against the Israeli Occupier.[5] Ever since the Israeli occupation of native Palestine, the over 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank have been living under complete military control, while Israeli settlers are considered citizens subject to Israel’s civilian justice system.[6] Under Israeli law, government officials are permitted to subject Palestinians to administrative detention, which means arbitrary detainment without charge, trial, or conviction on the grounds that the detainee intends to commit a future crime.[7] Despite the fact that such arbitrary detention contravenes every notion of due process under international standards, Israeli officials carry out these detainments under the pretense of having “classified secret information” against the detainee.[8] Such secret evidence, however, is never presented to the Palestinian detainees; an indefinite imprisonment is their only requital.[9]

 Under international law, administrative detentions are illegal except in limited cases of emergency.[10] As a United Nations expert notes: “In international law, administrative detention is permitted only in exceptional circumstances, and only for short periods of time. Israel’s practices exceed all of the international legal boundaries.”[11] In fact, from the Israeli occupying government to the Israeli supreme court justices, Israeli officials are complicit with this illegal practice.[12] While the Occupying Body tries to justify such arbitrary detention under a legalized system—for instance, by requiring, on the surface, that judges review the detention orders before approval—judicial review becomes a mere façade when it is the entire system working to ethnically cleanse the native Palestinian population.[13] The Israeli government does not allow Palestinian detainees a reasonable opportunity to defend against the allegations, divorcing completely from international standards of due process and morality altogether.[14] In 2021 alone, 1,600 administrative detention orders were issued against Palestinians by the Occupying Body.[15]

 After such arbitrary detainment, Palestinian prisoners are thus left with the only means of protest and legal defense they can muster: hunger striking. One such recent case involves Hisham Abu Hawash, a 40-year-old father of five, who captured international attention after completing a 141-day hunger strike in protest of his administrative detention by the Israeli Occupier.[16] After a hospitalization in which he fell in and out of a coma and temporarily lost his eyesight and ability to speak, Palestinians rallied all across the region demanding Hisham’s release.[17] Hisham had to face the threat of imminent death before Israeli authorities released him; such release was clearly only due to a fear of retaliation and uprising from the Palestinian people and the free people of the world.[18] Hisham’s fate is not an isolated one; in 2021, 60 Palestinians went on hunger strikes to protest their illegal detainment by the Israeli Occupation.[19] Six Palestinian detainees made prominent headlines for their prolonged hunger strikes, most of them fathers of small children.[20] One such prisoner, Kayed Al-Fasous, was held in solitary confinement and spent extended periods in Barzalei Hospital after his health was compromised indefinitely.[21] While other defendants around the world may contest their convictions through fair procedures, under Israeli occupation, Palestinian detainees like Hisham and Kayed contest their convictions through IV tubes.

 The Palestinian hunger strikes speak to a problem much larger than any single detainee’s imprisonment term. The tragedy lies in the fact that the Israeli Occupier somehow gets away with transgressing against basic tenets of international law, as no meaningful repercussions from the international community have initiated.[22] Such gross and chronic violations of human rights find little precedent in human history. Yet the arbitrary and capricious detainment of Palestinian land and life is but a microcosm of living under Israeli Occupation.[23] The question remains this: how many hunger strikes will it take to resuscitate Palestine from Israeli occupation?

[1] Alizeh Kohari, Hunger Strikes: What Can they Say? BBC News, Aug. 16, 2011, https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-14540696.

[2] Id.

[3] Id.

[4] Id.

[5] Israel Agrees to Release Palestinian Prisoner on Hunger Strike, Aljazeera, Jan. 4, 2022, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/4/israel-agrees-to-release-palestinian-prisoner-on-hunger-strike.

[6] Id.

[7] Michael Lynk, Israel: Release or Charge Five Palestinian Hunger Strikers, OCHR, Oct. 21, 2021, https://www.ohchr.org/SP/HRBodies/HRC/Pages/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=27685&LangID=S.

[8] Fears Grow for the Lives of 5 Palestinians on Hunger Strike in Israeli Prisons, UN News, Oct. 22, 2021, https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/10/1103762; Administrative Detention, B’tselem, Nov. 11, 2017, https://www.btselem.org/administrative_detention.

[9]   Id.

[10] Id.

[11] Id.

[12] Administrative, supra note 8.

[13] Id.

[14] Israel Agrees, supra note 5.

[15] Id.

[16] Mustafa Barghouti, Hisham Abu Hawash Draws Attention to the Plight of Palestinian Prisoners, Middle Eastern Monitor, Jan. 12, 2022, https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220112-hisham-abu-hawash-draws-attention-to-the-plight-of-palestinian-prisoners/.

[17] Id.

[18] Id.

[19] Six Palestinians on Hunger Strike Protesting their Administrative Detention, B’tselem, Nov. 9, 2021, https://www.btselem.org/press_releases/20211109_israel_must_release_all_administrative_detainees.

[20] Id.

[21] See Lynk supra note 7.

[22] Id.

[23] See Virginia Tilley, Beyond Occupation: Apartheid, Colonialism, and International Law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, 36-54, (2012).