4 January 2022

The apartheid Israeli regime must with immediate effect unconditionally release Hisham Abu Hawash from unjust incarceration, as well as the over 500 other Palestinians that it unjustly detained. The SACP reiterates its international solidarity with the Palestinian people in their just struggle for democratic national sovereignty and fundamental right to self-determination. Like the struggle by the South African liberation movement in the past under successive colonial and apartheid regimes, the struggle by the Palestinian people is a just struggle against colonial and apartheid oppression, segregation, occupation of their land, and dictatorship by the occupying Israeli apartheid regime.

A father of five, Hisham Abu Hawash (40), detained under the injustice called “administrative detention”, has been on hunger strike for 140 days in protest against the injustice. He is now at risk of death or massive and permanent organ failure since he started the strike on 17 August 2021.

Abu Hawash undertook the hunger strike as a measure of the last resort. His brave actions have lifted the lid on the gross atrocities faced by the over 500 Palestinians detained under the unjust administrative detention in the hands of the apartheid Israeli regime.

In violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states that “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention,” administrative detention orders are imposed by Israeli military commanders, who are under no obligation to state the reasons for the unjust incarceration.

The detainee is incarcerated without legal proceedings, based on the so-called “confidential” evidence that is not revealed to them or their legal representatives. The detainees face unknown allegations with no way to disprove them. They do not know when they might be released, if ever they will still be alive when that happens.

South Africans know too well the viciousness that comes with detention without trial, which they underwent under the apartheid era in the struggle against apartheid. As such, we cannot stand by and watch while other occupied people face similar, if not worse, atrocities elsewhere, as it is happening in Palestine.