On Monday, 5 June — the anniversary of the Naksa, the 1967 Zionist occupation of the remaining parts of Palestine (the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem), the Syrian Golan Heights and the Sinai of Egypt, the Administrative Prisoners’ Committee, announced yesterday by the Higher Emergency Committee of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement, announced its plans to move to an open hunger strike on 18 June to confront the policy of Israeli administrative detention.
The beginning of the strike also coincides with the 40th day anniversary of the martyrdom of Sheikh Khader Adnan, the Palestinian prisoner and long-term hunger striker whose life was taken after 86 days of hunger strike on 2 May 2023. Khader Adnan won his liberation from administrative detention — imprisonment without charge or trial — on four separate occasions through hunger strikes.
Since the end of 2022/beginning of 2023, the number of administrative detainees has consistently remained greater than 1,000, over one-fifth of the total number of Palestinian political prisoners. Administrative detention orders are issued on the basis of so-called “secret evidence” for up to six months at a time, indefinitely renewable. Palestinians routinely are jailed for years at a time under these orders, which particularly target community leaders and organizers in an effort to separate them from the people and the liberation movement as a whole.
In their statement, the prisoners make clear the necessity of support and engagement from the Palestinian people in exile and diaspora and international forces of solidarity. We invite all to join us in mobilizing, organizing and acting to support the prisoners’ struggle, bring an end to administrative detention and liberate Palestine and the prisoners!
Below is the full text of the new statement, released today:
In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful…
Statement by the Administrative Prisoners’ Committee on the national project and open-ended hunger strike in rejection of administrative detention
O masses of our revolutionary Palestinian people everywhere:
The administrative detainees in the prisons of the occupation have decided to launch their national project and their open-ended hunger strike in rejection of administrative detention, in fulfillment and loyalty to the path taken by the imprisoned martyr Khader Adnan, who was advancing, without retreat, on hunger strike. We take this step in order to preserve the principle for which our martyr paid the price, and to put the issue of administrative detainees on the table in a real and effective manner, in confrontation with the policies of the occupation and the Shin Bet, which enjoys torturing us, draining our lives, and stealing our years through the policy of arbitrary administrative detention.
This comes after the number of administrative detainees exceeded 1083, in an unprecedented manner. All parties concerned with the prisoners’ cause — the government, the factions, the resistance, the people, the institutions and the international community — must bear the burden and responsibility in ending our suffering and restraining the occupation regime from its repressive practices, because the level of aggression against the prisoners has never before reached its current level in its scale and boastfulness.
Our struggling people, our factions rising up, our heroic resistance: Facing all of these facts, on the fortieth anniversary of the martyrdom of Khader Adnan, we confirm the following:
First: We, as administrative detainees, will embark on an integrated national project to combat administrative detention, in which all administrative detainees from the entire spectrum of the prisoners’ movement will participate and join under the umbrella of the Palestinian flag. All methods of struggle are part of this initiative, primarily the open-ended hunger strike and the boycott of the occupation courts that has been going on since last September, and the programs of struggle that support the fight of the administrative detainees in their initiative: Freedom Revolution – Administrative Detainees’ Intifada.
Second: We announce to you that Sunday, 18 June 2023, will be the official date for the launch of the open-ended hunger strike, under the title Freedom Revolution – Administrative Detainees’ Intifada.
Third: We emphasize that our primary demand is to end administrative detention and oblige the occupying “state” to respect international humanitarian law.
Fourth: We call on the Palestinian Authority’s “presidency and government” to adopt the demands of the administrative detainees and activate all the mechanisms of diplomatic pressure, make our cause a national priority and provide an official and popular cradle to support us.
Fifth: It is required that all factions, the resistance, institutions, civil society organizations and all of our people must effectively support our cause and our strike, to rise up in all arenas and fields, to ignite all points of contact with the occupation and to form a lever of power and a safety net for us in our battle. Support us and do not leave us to be isolated by the occupation. You are our support, after God.
Sixth: We call upon the Palestinian communities in exile and diaspora to take action and engage in a movement of solidarity to support our cause through sit-ins in front of enemy embassies, and to address all European institutions and parliaments so that the occupation responds to our demands.
O free people everywhere, we will proceed with our strike and our project, as the years of our lives have passed in the hands of the Zionists without salvation finding us. This flood has reached its crest. We call on all for real support to stop the bleeding of detention and save us from the clutches of the occupation and its arbitrary policies. The stance of the people, the factions and the resistance, especially in the West Bank, in Jerusalem, and inside occupied Palestine ’48, can shorten the duration of the strike, ensure its success and end our suffering.
Glory to the martyrs, freedom to the prisoners, healing to the wounded.
Committee of Administrative Detainees in Occupation Prisons
Monday, 16 Dhul al-Qidah 1444.
Corresponding to 5 June 2023.
Join us on Saturday and Sunday, June 10th and 11th to hear the effects of U.S. imperialism on the people of Cuba at 10:30AM [GMT -4].
