Rearrested Palestinian woman on hunger strike: official

A Palestinian woman freed in a mass prisoner swap with Israel, then recaptured, is on the eighth day of a hunger strike, the Palestinian prisoner affairs minister said Friday.

Haneh Shalabi was among more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners released in October in a trade for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, held by Gaza-based militants for more than five years.

She was re-arrested on February 16 and ordered to be detained without trial for six months, prisoner affairs minister Issa Qaraqaa told AFP.

On Tuesday, Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan ended a 66-day hunger strike in protest at his his imprisonment without charge ̶ known in Israel as “administrative detention” ̶ under a deal that will see him released in April.

“Apparently the Palestinians in Israeli prisons are beginning to treat administrative detention in a new way after Khader Adnan’s case,” Qaraqaa said.

Shalabi, from the West Bank village of Burqin village near Jenin, spent 30 months in detention before her release last year. The army said she was “a global jihad-affiliated operative” and was re-arrested on suspicion that she “posed a threat to the area.”

The Palestinian Prisoners Club says she is one of five inmates freed in the October swap who has since been re-arrested.

Top-selling Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot cited Israeli security officials on Friday as saying the roundup was not a breach of the exchange deal, as the Palestinians were recaptured because of renewed militant activity during the past four months.

Adnan’s protest, the longest hunger strike carried out by any Palestinian prisoner, attracted international attention and threw a spotlight on Israel’s use of administrative detention, a military procedure which allows suspects to be held without charge indefinitely.