An agreement was reached on Tuesday between the administrative detainee Hisham Abu Hawash and the military prosecutor's office, according to which he would stop his hunger strike, which has been going on for 141 days, in exchange for his detention not being renewed.
Following threats of escalation from Gaza should Abu Hawash die as a result of the hunger strike, Israel agreed that the detention order would not be extended beyond February 26. Many factors intervened in the contacts, including the office of Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
Official PA television reported that under the direction of Abbas and the close monitoring of the PA intelligence chief, the issue of prisoner Hisham Abu Hawash had come to a conclusion.
A Hamas spokesman said he "congratulates Hisham Abu Hawash on his victory over the Zionist prisons, he has once again demonstrated the ability of the Palestinian people to show resilience and forcibly achieve their victories over Israel."
"Surrender to terrorism," commented MK Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionism party. "There is no other way to call it. A government that relies on terrorists and has made us all their hostages."
Jailed terrorists have more than once used the method of hunger strikes in order to pressure Israel to release them or improve the conditions of their imprisonment.
Israel has several times in the past caved to the pressure and released some hunger strikers.
Some 1,550 Palestinian Arabs imprisoned in Israel ended a hunger strike in May of 2012, in exchange for a package of measures which would allow visits from relatives in Gaza and the transfer of detainees out of solitary confinement.
At times, the terrorists were found to be secretly eating during the hunger strike. A prominent example of this was in 2017, when the Israel Police released footage of archterrorist Marwan Barghouti, who was caught eating in secret while maintaining the pretenses of his own hunger strike.