Palestinian Journalist Muhammad al-Qiq’s Hunger Strike Enters 87th Day inside of Israeli Hospital
Martyrdom is staring down 33 year old Palestinian journalist Muhammad al-Qiq as he somehow clings to life after, what is nearing, three months of starvation in protest of his illegal imprisonment by Israel.
By Dezeray Lyn
In HaEmek hospital in Afula, al-Qiq grinds on with an 87 day hunger strike which was launched on 25th November after a weeks-long interrogation which included physical torture and sexual threats against al-Qiq, his wife and young child.
Al-Qiq was arrested in November on alleged “secret evidence” of terror activity with Hamas, though he remains, as do all other Palestinians held for months, and even years on end under Israeli administrative detention, without charge or trial.
What has ensued in recent weeks have been a flurry of appeals made by al-Qiq’s legal team to the Israeli high courts for reprieve, the termination of al-Qiq’s administrative detention, and for al-Qiq to be transferred for treatment to a West Bank hospital in Ramallah- all which were met with refusal.
Israeli courts ruled instead to offer al-Qiq a transfer for treatment to al-Makassed Hospital in occupied East Jerusalem, the site of numerous, violent Israeli special forces raids. Al-Qiq refused.
In a statement released on February 17th, Amnesty International slammed the Israeli courts for their refusal to grant al-Qiq the transfer of his choosing, adding that “The decisions of Israeli courts on Muhammed al-Qiq, including the latest Supreme Court decision, fit a wider pattern.” Adding that, “Israeli courts have failed, over many years, to provide effective legal recourse to the thousands of Palestinian administrative detainees held without charge or trial on the basis of secret “evidence” withheld from them and their lawyers, under orders that can be renewed indefinitely.”
Israel is reportedly furthering grievous injury to al-Qiq’s human rights by the long hall of doors their courts have slammed in his face due to the upsurge of violence and resistance occurring in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem beginning early October last year, prompting the feeling that things cannot get much worse if martyrdom does indeed come to Muhammad al-Qiq.
Both the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross have expressed concern over al-Qiq’s critical condition, though expressing concern has not done enough to have an impact on the Israeli high courts, or the Israeli government at large, who has done little more than drag al-Qiq’s starvation out over a frightening swath of time.
Solidarity in the form of ongoing mass boycott of Israel as part of the Boycott Divest Sanction campaign, organized disturbance inside of an Israeli prison among Palestinian prisoners, along with numerous other hunger strikes currently happening in concert with the 87 day starvation that has al-Qiq’s skeletal frame writhing in agony in an occupation hospital in Afula Israel is blazing at the front lines of this struggle.
Perhaps a push for more than mere phantom presence in western media would thicken the voice of resistance to the Israeli occupation of Palestine and in this case specifically, against Israel’s illegal system of administrative detention under which over 600 Palestinians are currently jailed.
33 year old Muhammad al-Qiq is a Palestinian journalist with a wife and child living in the Israeli occupied West Bank of Palestine who is dying in a hospital bed in an Israeli hospital in Afula.
Israel is a 68 year old settler state responsible for the forced displacement of three quarters of a million Palestinians, countless murders, support for criminal regimes around the world including apartheid South Africa, systemic illegal imprisonment, spree breakers of international law, UN resolutions, the Geneva Convention and Palestinian’s human rights, multiple genocides and enacting an ongoing system of apartheid inside of historic Palestine.
Israel’s “secret evidence” against Muhammad al-Qiq alleges that he is a terrorist.
Body counts, refugee camps, and the meticulous documentation of six decades of domination and the exacting of global mayhem suggests that Israel is the terrorist.
Ray Hanania is an award winning political and humor columnist who analyzes American and Middle East politics, and life in general. He is an author of several books.
Hanania covered Chicago Politics and Chicago City Hall from 1976 through 1992 at the Daily Southtown and the Chicago Sun-Times. He began writing in 1975 publishing The Middle Eastern Voice newspaper in Chicago (1975-1977). He later published “The National Arab American Times” newspaper (2004-2007).
Hanania writes weekly columns on Middle East and American Arab issues as Special US Correspondent for the Arab News ArabNews.com, at TheArabDailyNews.com, and at SuburbanChicagoland.com. He has published weekly columns in the Jerusalem Post newspaper, YNetNews.com, Newsday, the Orlando Sentinel, Houston Chronical, and Arlington Heights Daily Herald.
Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media. In 2009, Hanania received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the recipient of the MT Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award. He was honored for his writing skills with two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild. In 1990, Hanania was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times editors for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.
His writings have also been honored by two national Awards from ADC for his writing, and from the National Arab American Journalists Association.
Hanania is the US Special Correspondent for the Arab News Newspaper, covering Middle East and Arab American issues. He writes for the Southwest News newspaper group writing on mainstream American issues.
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