Israel frees Palestinian prisoner after 20 day hunger strike

A Palestinian prisoner was released from prison after going on a hunger strike for 20 days in protest of his detention.

Mohammed Rimawi, 27, was taken by Israeli forces on July 19 after his home was raided in Beit Rima, northwest of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. He immediately began a hunger strike to protest his detention.

He had previously spent had spent three years in prison for struggling against the illegal Israeli occupation, but was released earlier this year on January 7.

Days later, the Israeli army detained his 54-year-old father, Nimr Rimawi in an unsuccessful bid to pressure his son to end his hunger strike and sign a document of confession to the accusations placed against him.

The prison administration had decided to release Rimawi after his health deteriorated as a result of the hunger strike, after he was taken to Ramallah hospital for emergency medical attention.

Palestinians routinely undertake hunger strikes in protest of detention by Israeli forces.

Hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli prisons in launched a hunger strike last year to mark Palestinian Prisoners Day.

Imprisoned Palestinian Marwan Barghouti led the strike, which began with 1,500 participants with those partaking ingesting only water and salt.

"Having spent the last 15 years in an Israeli prison, I have been both a witness to and a victim of Israel's illegal system of mass arbitrary arrests and ill-treatment of Palestinian prisoners. After exhausting all other options, I decided there was no choice but to resist these abuses by going on a hunger strike," he wrote at the time in a New York Times op-ed.