By Saman Bhat ’22 & Amelia Luo ’23
Global Editor & Staff Writer, Photographer
Maher al-Akhras, currently a Palestinian prisoner, has ended his over three-month-long hunger strike after Israeli forces agreed to grant him freedom on Nov. 26, rather than renewing his sentence. Beginning on July 27 of this year, the day he was detained, the 49-year-old father of six went on a hunger strike for more than 100 days. According to The Guardian, he lost over 90 pounds.
Al-Akhras was arrested and detained under what is known as “administrative detention,” a controversial policy that Israel implements to legally detain Palestinians for indefinite periods due to suspicion of undisclosed security offenses. These detentions can last for years without trial. According to Al-Jazeera, Israel claims that the “procedure allows authorities to hold suspects and prevent attacks while continuing to gather evidence.” However, some critics think the country is abusing its power through this practice. Amnesty International, along with several other Palestinian rights groups, have claimed that Israel’s administrative detention policy is a human rights violation, as it obstructs Palestinian peoples’ right to due process.
According to a Time magazine article written in 2016, Israel has imprisoned nearly 4,000 people under administrative detention over the past decade, with only 35 of them being Jewish. This procedure heavily targets Palestinian citizens, as over 350 Palestinians — including two minors — were being held in Isreali prisons under the policy as of August 2020, as reported by the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. This violates international humanitarian laws, as Article 76 of the fourth Geneva Convention states that protected people under occupation should be detained only in the occupied territory.
One anonymous Mount Holyoke student noted that administrative detention has a historic connection to colonization, writing, “I think that the parallels between the methods of administrative detention taken by Israel and the colonization efforts made by Great Britain in the past highlight the fact that Israel is clearly colonizing Palestine.”
According to the Shin Bet, Israel’s security agency, al-Akhras was arrested because information suggested that he was an active member of the Islamic Jihad Movement and was involved in “activities that endanger public safety.” Michael Lynk, a special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Palestinian territories, called for al-Akhras’s immediate release. In a report to the United Nations Human Right Council, he said that “Israeli security forces who arrested and detained Mr. Al-Akhras have not provided any persuasive evidence in an open hearing to justify its allegations that he is a genuine security threat.”
The Shin Bet also suggested that al-Akhras had been arrested five times previously for the same reason, but the involvement was denied by al-Akhras’ family and by al-Akhras himself, who claimed not to have any involvement in “security activity.” According to the International Association for Democratic Lawyers, two of al-Akhras’s previous arrests were under the same circumstances he is now facing. Al-Akhras was held for 16 and 11 months during 2009-2011 and 2018, respectively. He was not charged with a crime or given a trial either time.
Mount Holyoke’s Palestine Solidarity Group commented on how al-Akras’ situation is far from unique, but has brought global attention to the true nature of Israeli detention. They stated, “The Israeli prison system is an inhumane and violent tool of the illegal occupation of Palestine. Maher al-Akhras’ 103-day hunger strike has brought the conditions faced by Palestinian political prisoners to the eyes of the world, but he is far from the first or the last Palestinian to experience this violence.”
Al-Akhras is not the only Palestinian prisoner that has been detained for long periods of time due to questionable circumstances. In 2016, a Palestinian journalist named Muhammad al-Qiq was freed from six months of administrative detention after a 94-day hunger strike. Time magazine reported that “75 percent of administrative detainees are held for longer than six months without trial, and 40 percent for more than a year. Just 5 percent of Palestinians held in administrative detention are indicted at the end of their detention.”
Anat Matar, a Tel Aviv University philosophy professor who coordinates the Israeli Committee on Palestinian Prisoners advocacy group, told The Guardian about how the goal of al-Akhras’ hunger strike was not just his immediate release but also to highlight the injustices and suffering caused by administrative detention. She said, “The point for us is to protest administrative detention. What he wants is to move the discussion from his own case to the general one, and that is why he pays with his own life.”
According to Al-Jazeera, many Palestinian prisoners state that they have been subjected to torture and violence while in custody. As a result, these Palestinian detainees stage protests, including hunger strikes, against their prison conditions. This form of protest seems to be an effective tool in undermining Israeli occupation. “A hunger strike offers a rare opportunity to take back control. It is a paradoxical move, asserting the essence of your freedom by denying your oppressor control over your body,” Sally Abed wrote for The Nation.
Al-Akhras was set to be transferred back to a prison medical facility on Oct. 23, but submitted an urgent petition against the transfer. The interim order was granted by the court. According to The Times of Israel, there were concerns from Physicians for Human Rights that the prison medical facility might engage in forced treatment or feeding, which a public hospital would not do.
Al-Akhras’ family stated that he would be in Kaplan hospital until Nov. 16, and would then be transferred to an Arab hospital in east Jerusalem for another 10 days.
The Palestine Solidarity Group stated that they are “overjoyed that al-Akhras won his freedom.” They added, “We know that freedom for one man does not solve the collective punishment that Palestinians face on a daily basis at the hands of the Israeli occupation. We stand in solidarity with Maher al-Akhras and all imprisoned Palestinians and are committed to working against carceral systems in Palestine, in the U.S. (Turtle Island) and across the world.”
