TEHRAN - Israel has freed prominent Palestinian prisoner Khalil Awawdeh earlier than he was expected to be released, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society has announced.  It is another victory for the Palestinian prisoner's resistance. 

Awawdeh made regional and global headlines last year after going on hunger strike for 172 days in protest against his administrative detention by the Israeli regime, by holding him without charge or trial. 

"We are an undefeated people in our battles. We either win or we die," he was quoted as saying last year from Israel's Ofer Prison. 

In May this year, another high-profile Palestinian prisoner, Khader Adnan, was martyred following an 87-day hunger strike in an Israeli prison. The father of nine children became the first Palestinian hunger striker to be martyred in Israeli custody in more than 30 years.

His death set off missiles by the Palestinian resistance in the besieged Gaza Strip in the direction of Israeli settlements. 

Reports say Awawdeh has now been transferred to a hospital in Ramallah to undergo a medical checkup following his transfer to an Israeli military checkpoint, northwest of occupied al-Quds (Jerusalem).

Israel has arrested the father of four on many occasions, and he has spent a total of 14 years in and out of Israeli prisons, including eight years in administrative detention.

The Israeli Prison Service was required to free Awawdeh last year on October 2, the official date of his release date. During his jail term, he observed 172 days of hunger strike and ended the protest after being promised that his administrative detention would not be renewed. 

Just days before he was set to be released, Israel charged him with allegedly smuggling a cell phone when he was at an Israeli prison hospital receiving treatment for his deteriorating health.

"The medical negligence in the occupation prisons is significant, and after the prisoner suspended his hunger strike, the court fabricated a charge against him in order to keep him in prison," a source close to Awawdeh said at the time. 

“My strike is not against life, but against restrictions, and in order to take away my freedom,” his wife quoted him as saying after being allowed a rare opportunity to visit him during the hunger strike. 

Dalal Awawdeh also quoted her husband, who is from a town northwest of al-Khalil, as saying "my strike is not against life, but against the restrictions imposed on me to take away my freedom."

Quoting her husband, she added, "The security personnel are eating food in front of me, and I feel sad for them because they think this might affect me," noting that she saw her husband like "a skeleton in front of her, his facial features completely hidden."

Despite being on a lengthy hunger strike, Dalal Awawdeh described her husband's morale as "very high" and told the media that "his steadfastness is as strong as the mountains of Palestine, and his morale is scratching the clouds."

An Egyptian-brokered cease-fire in May this year, following Israeli airstrikes on the besieged Gaza Strip stipulated that the prisoner Awawdeh be released. 

The 40-year-old was last imprisoned on 27 December 2021. He spent two years in administrative detention after his last arrest. Since? then he has neither been charged nor put on trial. 

The prominent and now-freed Palestinian prisoner is among the many inmates who have resisted the regime. 

On Friday, Palestinian prisoner Maher al-Akhras suspended his hunger strike, which lasted for 23 days, in protest against his detention without charges or trial by the Israeli occupation authorities.

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said al-Akhras made the move to allow his lawyer to engage in negotiations with the Israeli authorities ahead of his next military court session scheduled for October 26.

Last month, in a sign of the high-level organization among Palestinian prisoners in different jails, hundreds of inmates conducted a joint hunger strike in response to being stripped of their most basic human rights and in the face of brutal punitive measures imposed by the extremist cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

The strike ended after talks between the prisoner's leaders and Israeli prison authorities reached a satisfactory result for the Palestinians being incarcerated in what was viewed as a major victory for the Palestinian prisoner's resistance. 

Israel has been widely condemned for using administrative detention, a practice the regime uses to jail any Palestinian it deems as being a security threat for an indefinite period without any charge or trial. 

But even activists who pose a cultural threat to Israel have been placed under administrative detention. 

Israeli media recently reported that the regime’s military courts approved 90 percent of the administrative orders that were submitted for review this year. 

According to the Palestinian NGO Addameer, which documents the plight of Palestinian prisoners, there are currently 1,200 Palestinian inmates under administrative detention. 

The total number of political Palestinian prisoners the occupation regime is holding behind bars is approximately 5,100. 

The number includes 165 children, the youngest being 13 years old, and 33 female prisoners. 

Israel has around 25 notorious prison facilities to hold Palestinians, many of whom lack the most basic necessities that many prisons around the world offer. At the same time, physical abuse and other forms of torture take place against the Palestinian inmates, in particular during interrogation. 

Nafha prison, for instance, is an old building located in the southeastern desert area of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and is known to hold Palestinian leaders, where they are subjected to gradual death while isolating them from other prisoners. And being a prison in the desert, it is extremely cold during the winter and extremely hot during the summer. 

Many Palestinian women prisoners are held at the Rimonim Prison Hasharon, which is surrounded by a high wall that reaches three meters in height and includes four high watch towers. 

Like many Israeli prisons, it includes a section for interrogation. 

The Supreme Emergency Committee for Palestinian Prisoners Affairs has reaffirmed its support for the hunger strike prisoners, saying it will not leave them to face their fate alone. 

The committee has held the occupation regime and its "criminal and repressive institutions" fully responsible for the lives and safety of the hunger strikers, stressing that the martyrdom of any hunger-striking prisoner would be treated as a direct assassination by the occupation regime.

Culled from Tehran Times