Palestine: Khader Adnan’s Death and Escalating Violence
A 44-year-old Palestinian man, Khader Adnan, has died in Israeli prison after 87 days on hunger-strike. Khader Adnan’s death was announced on May 2nd, 2023, with his widow immediately calling for calm. Despite calls by Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) for Adnan to be sent to hospital on April 23rd, 2023, the Israeli court rejected two pleas regarding this matter, in addition to ignoring calls that he should be allowed to see his family; he has nine children. Khader Adnan was connected with the militant Palestinian group, Islamic Jihad, reportedly a former spokesman, having been a member of the group since he was a student.
Since Adnan’s death became public knowledge, violence has broken out between Israel and Palestine, with the latter firing three rockets and a mortar shell towards Israel in immediate response. Despite Israeli siren systems sounding, the weaponry landed in open areas in Israel, but as of May 3rd, 2023, more than 100 Palestinian rockets and mortars have been fired towards Israel. Israel has fired back with warplanes, striking sites they say are linked to Hamas but a BBC Palestinian source has said homes have also been destroyed – Hamas is designated as a terrorist group by the EU and United States amongst others, but since 2006, the political organisation has been in power in the Gaza Strip. Reports announce that a Palestinian man, Hashel Mubarak Salman Mubarak, has been killed in Gaza due to the current violence. As of May 3rd, 2023, Al Jazeera reported that mediators from Qatar, Egypt and the United Nations have intervened to broker a much-needed return to “calm”; and as of the writing of this article, a truce between Gaza and Israel is standing.
Khader Adnan had previously been detained by Israel on twelve occasions - Al Jazeera have called his repeated arrests ‘arbitrary detentions’ - undertaking five hunger strikes before this final strike that killed him. Eight years of his life has been spent in jail and he has been held by Israel under their controversial “administrative detention” rules, whereby, according to The Guardian, suspects are held ‘without charge or trial on secret evidence for renewable six-month periods on the grounds they pose a security threat.’ The Palestinian Authority has also utilised this method, with human rights groups criticising both Palestinian and Israeli usage of this tactic.
As of 2023, Israel is holding over 1000 Palestinian detainees under the “administrative detention” rules, and there has been widespread criticism by Palestinians of the use of this rule; according to the EU Parliament Policy Brief on Israel’s Policy of Administrative Detention (2012), Israel uses these rules to limit Palestinian political activism. Conditions in Israeli prisons have also led to over 2000 Palestinian prisoners partaking in hunger strikes. Yet, as the report states, these issues have struggled to gain international attention.
As of May 6th, 2023, two Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank. These men were connected to a shooting of an Israeli in Avnei Hefetz earlier this week, with Israel responding by conducting a raid on the Palestinian suspects. As Al Jazeera reported, Israeli forces have been conducting fatal raids on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank for over a year, with 111 Palestinians and 50 Israelis losing their lives since the start of 2023.
The death of Adnan, the subsequent Israeli-Palestinian violence and ongoing raids in the occupied West Bank is a reminder that the ongoing complex, multidimensional, and extremely tense socio-political reality of Israel-Palestine, and any progress towards a viable “solution”, has not changed. Rather, what has changed perhaps is how the international community appears increasingly distracted by their own respective regional issues, such as the EU and Europe with the Ukraine war, and Arab states themselves increasingly distanced from the Palestinian problem, looking to other diplomatic concerns, like forging new relations with Assad’s Syria. As Judy Dempsey writes for Carnegie Europe:
‘Thus, even in face of escalating violence in the West Bank, an Israeli government set on Jewish supremacy and permanent control over the West Bank, and a Palestinian Authority that lacks legitimacy and is fast losing control, Europeans have stuck to an increasingly meaningless two-state mantra rather than sending clear signals regarding the Israeli government’s program, engaging in crisis management, or pushing for Palestinian Authority reform.’