RAMALLAH, West Bank — While the health of hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners is significantly deteriorating, demonstrations are growing throughout the West Bank and Gaza.

On Tuesday, a Jerusalem district court denied bail for Samer Issawi, who has been refusing food for over 200 days. But that only made his lawyers and prisoner organizations more determined to try and get the Israeli Supreme Court to intervene.

Issawi was among the more than 1,000 prisoners who were set free in 2011 as part of Hamas’ deal with Israel to release Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. But in July 2012 he was re-arrested based on secret evidence and a passage in Israeli military law, which allows Israel to sentence him to serve the rest of his previous sentence, which for Issawi means 20 years. This is the reason for Issawi’s hunger strike.

“They will put you in jail and you will never know why,” said Mahmoud Hassan, head of the legal unit of the Palestinian NGO Addameer, to Al-Monitor in Ramallah when asked to explain the implications of article 186: “It states that the military can decide to have a prisoner or ex-prisoner who is rearrested serve the remainder of his sentence, such as the prisoners who were released in the prisoners exchange. Of course, the article in the military order does not mention the Gilad Shalit exchange but it’s referring to these prisoners. Also, it says that the military can make this decision based on administrative or secret files and without having any accusations made available to the prisoner or the lawyer.”