Arabs and Jews demonstrated on Sunday outside Assaf Harofeh Hospital where Islamic Jihad operative Khalil Awawdeh, who has been on hunger strike more than over 160 days, is hospitalized, demanding that his administrative detention be lifted.
The demonstrators waved banners on which were written in Arabic and Hebrew the words, "We are a people who do not abandon our prisoners and detainees", "Respect, freedom and human rights", "Immediately release the administrative detainee Khalil Awawdeh", "No to administrative detention", "We will not abandon our prisoners" and "we place full responsibility on the prison service".
The Central Command recently froze Awawdeh's administrative detention as long as he is in the hospital. Later, the judges of the Supreme Court ruled that the court has no room to intervene in the decision to keep Awawdeh under arrest despite his medical condition.
Sunday’s demonstration was attended by Sheikh Kamal Khatib, the deputy leader of the northern faction of the Islamic Movement.
In a conversation with the Al-Jarmaq website which reported on the demonstration, Khatib said that Awawdeh, in his hunger strike, represents all seven of the administrative detainees currently held by Israel, and called on the Arab public to act more forcefully to pressure the authorities to release him.
Awawdeh’s name made headlines when the Islamic Jihad demanded his release as part of the conditions for the ceasefire that ended the IDF’s Operation Breaking Dawn.
While the Islamic Jihad claimed that Israel agreed to release both Awawdeh and Bassam Al-Saadi, the group’s leader in Judea and Samaria who was arrested before the start of the operation, Israeli leaders have denied the claim.
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.
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.