Palestinian hunger striker set for release by Israel Monday

Palestinian prisoner and hunger striker Samer al-Issawi is scheduled for release from an Israeli prison on Monday.

The impending release was announced by the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, which issued a statement celebrating Issawi’s long-awaited freedom.

The Jerusalem-born Issawi, 34, went without food for for nine months, the longest hunger strike ever staged in an Israeli prison. At one point, he was reported to weigh no more than 48 kgs and there were grave concerns about the state of his health.

Issawi was arrested in 2002 on charges of shooting at an Israeli vehicle, and was sentenced to a 27-year prison term. He spent the next decade in Israeli jails, before being released as part of the Egyptian-brokered November 2011 prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas.

More than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners were exchanged for the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Shalit, a soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces, was kidnapped in 2006 and held by Hamas for five years inside the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Only a few months after Issawi’s release, in July 2012, he was re-arrested by Israel on charges of “trying to enter the area of Al-Ram," a West Bank town on the eastern edge of Jerusalem.

He began his hunger strike on August 1, 2012, in protest at what he called his “arbitrary” arrest. For the next nine months, Issawi refused all solid foods. He appeared several times at the Israeli military court at Ofer, as well as the Magistrate’s Court in Jerusalem.

An Israeli court ruled in April that Issawi must be released. It was unclear why he has continued to be held in prison in the months since that ruling.