Two Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails have been on hunger strike for 26 days respectively in protest of their unfair administrative detention without charge or trial, today said the Palestinian Prisoner's Society (PPS).

Mohammad Awwad, 25, from the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem, was detained by the Israeli occupation army on October 25, 2020, and was given an administrative detention order for six months.

After an Israeli court rejected an appeal to fix his current detention order and release him upon its end, Awwad started a preemptive hunger strike to avoid his detention term being renewed indefinitely by the Israeli occupation authorities.

In the meantime, Palestinian administrative detainee Ghadanfar Abu Atwan, 28, from the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, is also on his 26th day of hunger strike against detention without charge or trial.

In October 2020, an Israeli court ruled that Abu Atwan would serve six months in prison as an administrative detainee, without a charge or trial, prompting him to start a hunger strike in protest of his unfair detention without legal grounds.

Israel's widely condemned practice of administrative detention allows the detention of Palestinians without charge or trial for renewable intervals ranging between three and six months based on undisclosed evidence that even a detainee’s lawyer is barred from viewing.

Amnesty International has once described Israel’s use of administrative detention as a “bankrupt tactic” and has long called on Israel to bring its use to an end.

Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes as a way to protest their illegal administrative detention and to demand an end to this policy, which violates international law.