Khader Adnan, the Palestinian who recently ended a 66-day hunger strike against his detention by Israel without charge or trial, is recovering well, but still remains in a precarious medical condition, according to a joint statement from the Palestinian prisoner support group Addameer and Physicians for Human Rights—Israel, which respectively sent a lawyer and doctor to visit him on the 23rd. That same day, news emerged that a Palestinian woman has begun her own hunger strike against her detention without charge or trial by Israel. Hana Yahya al-Shalabi spent more than two years in administrative detention, and had been freed in October as part of the prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas. On Feb. 17, al-Shalabi, who is 29, was once again arrested by Israeli occupation forces from her home near Jenin in the occupied West Bank, and is again under detention without charge or trial. (Electronic Intifada, Feb. 23)
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Hana al-Shalabi ends hunger strike
Hana Shalabi, the Palestinian woman who spent more than 40 days on hunger strike to protest her detention without charge, was released from an Israeli prison on April 1 and sent into temporary exile in Gaza under a deal reached with Israeli authorities. The deal has been criticized by rights groups and the Palestinian prisoners affairs ministry, which said she had been forced to accept the arrangement. In a statement released through her lawyer Jawad Bulus, Shalabi insisted she had agreed to the deal voluntarily. Palestinian prisoner support group Addameer and Physicians For Human Rights-Israel, both of which worked on Shalabi’s case, expressed concern about the deal in a joint statement. They noted that their officials, as well as Shalabi’s relatives, were denied access to her during the final days of her hunger strike. (NYT, April 2; AFP, April 2)