RAMALLAH, West Bank -- A Palestinian held without charges by Israel for the past year is ending a 55-day hunger strike and in exchange will be released in two weeks, his wife and an advocacy group for prisoners said Monday.
Meanwhile, police in the West Bank said a Palestinian woman stabbed a female Israeli paramilitary police officer in the neck and seriously injured her, and France's foreign minister warned that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could explode "at any moment."
Rights groups have warned that Khader Adnan, 36, a senior activist in the militant Islamic Jihad group, is near death. His wife, Randa, said Monday, after visiting her husband in an Israeli hospital, that he lost a lot of weight and "looked like a small child." She said he was unable to hold their 15-month-old son.
Sivan Weizman of Israel's Prison Authority confirmed that Adnan agreed to end his hunger strike as part of a deal, but had no details. The Israeli military, which would be involved in any agreement to release him, had no comment.
It marked the second hunger strike for Adnan, whose protests have trained a spotlight on so-called administrative detention, a practice under which Israel holds Palestinians without trial or charges.
In a previous stint in administrative detention in 2012, Adnan went on a 66-day fast to press for his freedom, sparking weeks-long hunger strikes by hundreds of Palestinian detainees.
Under a deal reached late Sunday, Adnan ends his hunger strike and will be released July 12, said Kadoura Fares of the Palestinian Prisoners' Club, an advocacy group.
Islamic Jihad is a group that has been responsible for deadly attacks on Israelis. In July, Adnan was given six months of administrative detention, followed by a four-month extension. When he received another four-month extension, he launched his hunger strike.
Israel says administrative detentions are an important tool against Palestinian militants. The Israeli rights group B'Tselem says Israel's large-scale use of the practice violates international law, which only permits it in rare cases.
At the end of April, Israel held about 5,500 Palestinian security prisoners, including 396 in administrative detention, according to B'Tselem, which publishes official figures.
In the West Bank attack, the Israeli police officer was stabbed in the neck Monday at a checkpoint, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. She was taken to a hospital. Officers on the scene apprehended the attacker and found two other knives on her.
The attack comes a week after a similar stabbing attack in Jerusalem and a shooting attack at a West Bank settlement that killed an Israeli man.
Speaking on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the United Nations, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told a group of reporters that "if and when it explodes, it's very, very, very problematic for the whole region and for the world."
He said he discussed the possibility of moving forward on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process with key leaders during a recent Mideast visit including Arab League envoys, Egypt's president, Jordan's king, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Fabius suggested that a new international body including Arab nations be formed to help spur a peace deal, saying, "It could be sort of a Quartet plus."
The Quartet -- which includes the U.S., the European Union, the United Nations and Russia -- was formed in 2002 to try to mediate an end to the decades-old conflict and encourage the formation of a Palestinian state.
Information for this article was contributed by Edith M. Lederer of The Associated Press.
A Section on 06/30/2015