Palestinian prisoners, administrative detention and Maher al Ahkras

Maher al-Akhras’s hunger strike lasted 103 days and brought him to the brink of death. A Palestinian from Silat a-Dhahr in the occupied West Bank, Maher was detained on July 27th by the Israeli military occupation and held - without charge, trial, or evidence presented – under ‘administrative detention’.

Denied his freedom, his rights, and his humanity, Maher’s hunger strike follows a strong tradition of resistance to incarceration and military occupation in Palestinian struggle. After more than three months of refusing food and medical treatment from the same state that denied him his liberty, Maher ended his strike on the 6th November having secured the suspension of his detention on the 23rd November.

Administrative detention is a procedure that Israel uses to hold prisoners indefinitely without charge or trial, claiming secret evidence that necessitates detention for ‘security’ purposes. This secret evidence is not made available to the detained person or their lawyer and the detention can be renewed for an unlimited time. The procedure was adapted from the exiting British colonial regime and adopted into Israeli law in 1948, and it has continued to be applied to Palestinians since.

Israel currently holds 355 Palestinians in administrative detention. B’tselem, the human rights organisation, has documented that there have consistently been between 150 and 1,000 Palestinians subjected to administrative detention from 2000 to 2020. Accurate total numbers are unavailable due to a lack of information provided by occupation forces.

In 1948, the United Nations agreed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the foundation of international human rights law. Israel’s policy of administrative detention clearly breaches both Article 3 – ‘Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person’ – and Article 9 – ‘No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile’.

The UK government is bound to act against states breaching international law and should be holding Israel to account. Instead, the UK government provides diplomatic support and trades weapons with the Israeli government.

As well as a comprehensive military embargo on Israel, the Palestinian Boycott Divestment and Sanctions National Committee has called for companies profiting from the prison infrastructure and occupation to be targeted by boycott and divestment. These companies include Elbit Systems, who sell weapons used against Palestinians, and Hewlett Packard, who provide technology for Israel’s checkpoints and the apartheid system of identification checks.