Former hunger striker Eyad Abu Khudeir released to Gaza

abukhudeirPalestinian prisoner Eyad Abu Khudeir was released on Sunday, July 21 to Gaza after 9 years in occupation prisons. Abu Khudeir, who lived in Rafah prior to his arrest on April 12, 2005, was released in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, and was met with a rally to receive him. (For more on Eyad Abu Khudeir, and another prisoner from Gaza, Jamal al-Nouri, threatened with deportation, this article at the Electronic Intifada.)

Abu Khudeir launched a hunger strike on June 17, protesting the occupation’s failure to release him; his sentence ended on April 12, 2013, but he was not released – he had lived in Gaza since 1999, where he is married and had three children, but was never given family reunification. He held Jordanian nationality, but Jordan revoked his citizenship after his arrest and imprisonment, and so was stateless.

Until his hunger strike, Israeli officials had refused to release Abu Khudeir to Gaza.