Palestinian Woman Vows To Continue Hunger Strike
Palestinian woman on a hunger strike in an Israeli prison said she will continue to fast despite having her detention cut.
Hana Shalabi, 30, a member of Islamic Jihad, reportedly began a hunger strike 18 days ago after being put under administrative detention.
An Israeli military court on Monday reduced Shalabi’s six-month detention to four months, Reuters reported, in an attempt to convince her to end her hunger strike.
Shalabi previously had been held for 25 months in administrative detention. She was released as part of a prisoner exchange in October for captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. She is the third Palestinian prisoner released in the exchange to be arrested again.
Shalabi says she was subjected to a body search by a male Israeli soldier after her arrest and was assaulted when she resisted.
Shalabi’s lawyer, Fadi Qawasmi, said his client told him that she would continue her hunger strike in order to achieve her demands to end all administrative detentions, the Palestinian Ma’an news service reported.
Her hunger strike follows that of another Islamic Jihad member, Khader Adnan, who was protesting his being held in an Israeli prison without charges. Adnan ended his 66-day hunger strike earlier this month when Israeli prosecutors agreed that his administrative detention would not be renewed.
A prisoner can be held in administrative detention, without charges being brought, for up to four months, but it can be renewed.
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