Palestinian Bilal Kayed Ends Hunger Strike and Reaches Deal

Palestinian political prisoner Bilal Kayed reached an agreement Thursday with the Israeli military to end his administrative detention.

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The agreement reached states Kayed’s detention will not be renewed, and that the activist will be released on Dec.12, 2016, following almost 15 years of imprisonment.

Kayed was previously scheduled to be released in December 2015 but his detention order was extended, with Israeli authorities suggesting he was still a threat to the "national security" of Israel.

The latest release date was set for June 13 but authorities sentenced him to six months of administrative detention, resulting in Kayed beginning a hunger strike on June 15.

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In July, Kayed had refused a deal by the military to deport him to Jordan in exchange for his release. If he had complied with Israeli demands, he would have been exiled from Occupied Palestine and forced to cease all political activity.

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According to the Addameer Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association, Kayed suffers from blurred vision, severe pain to his body, fatigue and difficulty in breathing, moving and sleeping.

As of May 2016, some 7,000 Palestinian are jailed in Israeli prisons and 715 are being held under administrative detention, according to Addameer.

Kayed, who is 35 years old, will receive medical treatment in Barzilai Hospital, Ashkelon, Israel. He was born in Asira al-Shamaliya, a village near the West Bank's city of Nablus.

Arrested in 2002 and sentenced to almost 15 years in prison for his affiliation with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Kayed was born in Asira al-Shamaliya, a village near the West Bank city of Nablus.