One of Palestine’s most famous prisoners died at the age of 44 on Tuesday, May 2, in the Israeli cell where he had been in solitary confinement since the start of his hunger strike, which began 87 days earlier. Khader Adnan had been coming and going in Israeli prisons for a decade, starving himself to get out. He ended up embodying this form of peaceful and obscure struggle, carried out in the secrecy of the cells.
A member of Islamic Jihad, an organization dedicated to armed struggle, which does not aspire to power, the militant summed up in his contradictions the isolation, impotence and pride of the Palestinian resistance during this decade, faced with the colonial war waged by Israel in the territories occupied since 1967.
Khader Adnan is also the first Palestinian hunger striker to die in prison since 1992. His death prompted dozens of rocket attacks from Gaza, which injured three Asian migrant workers in Israel. As of Tuesday, Hamas, in power in the Palestinian enclave, assumed these shots in a press release from the joint command of the factions. Israel responded with aerial bombardment of weapons production sites, military positions and a Hamas tunnel, killing one and injuring five. On Wednesday morning, however, the army lifted restrictions on movement around Gaza, and schools reopened.
“Administrative” detention
For the young Palestinian insurgents who have taken up arms since 2021 in Jenin, Nablus, then Tulkarem and Jericho, in the West Bank, Khader Adnan has been an inspiration since in 2012 he imposed on the Israeli government to release him, at the end of first sixty-six day hunger strike. His regular visits to these towns aroused crowds.
This modest baker from Jenin was already an activist in the Islamic Jihad, very involved in the suicide attacks carried out in Israel during the second Intifada (2000-2005). His determination to protest for his part in a non-violent way had embarrassed Israel. Mr. Adnan refused his so-called detention “administrative”, without charges and without time limit. A practice criticized by human rights organizations as an instrument of blind repression. His fight summed up the impasse in which the Palestinian national movement found itself, while the revolutions of the “Arab Springs” upset the region.
Khader Adnan led other strikes, notably in 2015 and 2018, lasting fifty-six and fifty-eight days. His last arrest dated back to February. He was accused, this time with clearly stated charges by military justice, of belonging to a terrorist organization – the Islamic Jihad – and of inciting violence. “This indicates that the Israeli judicial system obeys the Shin Bet [renseignement intérieur] »judges the head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, Qadura Fares. “Adnan was not involved in the armed struggle, he was a politician. It is easy to produce an arbitrary accusation against him, since all the Palestinian organizations, including Fatah [au pouvoir] remain classified as terrorists in Israel. »
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