Khalil Awawda.. 12 years in Israeli prisons

Khalil Awawda belongs to a village family from the town of “Idna”, west of Hebron, in the southern West Bank. He was unable to complete his university studies due to repeated arrests and spending about 12 separate years inside the Israeli occupation prisons, including 6 years in administrative detention.

Awadeh suspended his hunger strike, which he began 172 days ago, as his lawyer, Ahlam Haddad, was able to sign a pledge to release him on October 2, 2022, according to his family.

After a first period of 111 days, Awawda suspended his hunger strike based on promises to release him, but the occupation reneged on its promise, and issued a new administrative detention order against him for a period of 4 months, which prompted him to resume his strike on July 2, 2022.

Birth and upbringing

Khalil Awawda, born in 1982, is from a family of 10. One of them went missing before facing arrest.

Awawda is married and has 4 daughters: Tulane (9 years), Lauren (5 years), Maria (3 years), and Maryam (1 year and 5 months).

Education and professional training

Awawda received his basic and secondary education in the schools of his town “Idna” and was one of the distinguished students, where he obtained an average of 92% in the general secondary school, the scientific branch, and his dream was to study medicine abroad, but he was unable to achieve his dream due to his circumstances.

He joined Palestine Polytechnic University to study engineering, but the occupation deprived him of his studies, where he was arrested in 2002 and sentenced to 5 and a half years in prison.

In recent years, he joined the study of economics at Al-Quds Open University in addition to doing self-employment to take care of his family. December 2021.

Awawda is a Hafez of the Holy Qur’an, a local activist, and a member of several voluntary campaigns in his town.

Administrative detention

Khalil Awawda spent a total of 12 years inside the occupation prisons, including 6 years in administrative detention.

Days after his arrest in December 2021, he was transferred to administrative detention for 6 months.

On March 3, 2022, Awawda embarked on a hunger strike to reject his administrative detention, which he suspended after 111 days following promises to set a time limit for his arrest and release.

However, days after suspending his strike, a new administrative detention order was issued against him for a period of 4 months, and he decided on July 2, 2022, to return to the strike until his demand was fulfilled.

Administrative detention is a decision to imprison by an Israeli military order, alleging the existence of a “secret file” for the detainee, and without filing an indictment, and extends for 6 months, which can be extended several times.

Dungeon.. insects and cockroaches

The prison administration detained Awawda in a filthy cell infested with insects and cockroaches. After he was transferred to Ramleh prison, the prison administration gave him a dirty blanket.

The prisoner, Awawda, was presented to a doctor who recommended that he be transferred to “Kaplan” Hospital as a result of his deteriorating condition, but the Israeli prison administration refused and sent him back to “Al-Ramla” hospital. The prisoner boycotted the medical examinations, and did not receive any supplies, nor sugar nor salt, and he was content with water only, until his health deteriorated and he was transferred to an Israeli hospital.

The occupation authorities were holding Awadeh inside the so-called “Ramle Prison Clinic”, in very bad conditions, and he suffered from wasting, imbalance and a sharp drop in weight, blurred vision, kidney aches, and vomiting blood. He also complained of severe stomach and flank pains, and because of these complications. He was in a wheelchair.

After the occupation retracted an agreement with him that he would be released on June 26, 2022, he insisted on continuing his hunger strike, and after his health deteriorated, the Israeli occupation authorities – in coordination with the International Red Cross – allowed Awawda’s wife and mother to visit him in the Israeli Isaf Harofeh Hospital.

On August 7, 2022, Awawda’s name was mentioned in the ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip, which ended 3 days of fighting between Israel and Islamic Jihad.

On August 10, 2022, the Ofer Court held an emergency session, after which it decided to allow his lawyer and a doctor from the Israeli organization Physicians for Human Rights to visit him, as she warned in her medical report – of which Al Jazeera Net obtained a copy – of the danger of the sudden death of the prisoner, which continued His long strike.

His wife, Dalal Awawda, 32, told Al-Jazeera Net, “I saw in front of me a skeleton covered with leather, prominent eyes, and a face without features, and the place of the abdomen and stomach was hollow, and the two men were bones and the knees were prominent. And the most dangerous of that was his weak and dispersed memory.”

On August 30, 2022, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected a petition to intervene for his release, despite the submission of a medical report confirming that he was at risk of sudden death.

Awadeh suspended his hunger strike yesterday, Wednesday, August 31, after his lawyer, Ahlam Haddad, signed a pledge to release him on October 2, 2022.

The Palestinian Prisoners Club said that the suspension of Awadeh’s hunger strike came after Egyptian efforts that did not stop over the past period, and the family of the prisoner Awawda considered that what he had achieved was a victory for all the Palestinian people.