Abu Muhammed

Doctors are warning that Khalil Awawdeh is at risk of imminent death after being held without charges for six months in an Israeli prison.

Images of an extremely emaciated Awawdeh were shared by his wife on Sunday, a day after she visited his hospital room.

Awawdeh said in the message that “this body, on which only bone and skin remain, does not reflect the weakness and nakedness of the Palestinian people, but rather reflects and mirrors the face of the real occupation.”

He added that Israel “claims to be a democratic state, while there is a prisoner without any charge who has stood against the barbaric administration detention to say in his flesh and blood no to administrative detention.”

The European Union Delegation to the Palestinians said on Sunday that it was “shocked” to see pictures of the frail body of prisoner Khalil Awawdeh, who has been on hunger strike in an Israeli jail since March.

“Shocked by the horrible pictures of Awawdeh who is hunger striking… in protest against his detention without charges and is in imminent danger of dying. Unless charged immediately, he has to be released,” the delegation tweeted.

Awawdeh, a 40-year-old father of four daughters, was arrested by the Israeli army from his home in Ithna, in the southern Israeli-occupied West Bank, in December 2021 and held under Israel’s so-called “administrative detention”.

He is one of approximately 670 Palestinians in Israeli prisons being held under the Israeli policy, which allows for indefinite detention without trial or charge based on “secret evidence” that neither the detainees nor their lawyers are allowed to see. [Al Jazeera & Middle East Eye]