Israel deported a Palestinian prisoner from Israel to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Sunday after she agreed to end her 43-day hunger strike last Thursday.

Hana Shalabi, who was arrested at her home in the West Bank on February 16, was expelled through the Erez crossing between Israel and Gaza and cannot leave Gaza for three years, Prisons Service spokeswoman Sivan Weizman said in a phone interview.

Shalabi´s hometown is Burkin, near Jenin in the West Bank.

Shalabi carried out the hunger strike to protest her being held by Israel without charges under a legal mechanism called administrative detention.

Israel had held Shalabi in administrative detention citing the need to protect intelligence sources from exposure in court proceedings.

But her original six-month detention was trimmed to four months by military judges on March 4.

She was previously arrested in 2009 and held without charges until being freed last October in a prisoner exchange that freed Gilad Shalit.

Israel struck a deal last month with Khader Adnan, another Islamic Jihad member, persuading him to end his 66-day fast after assuring him that he would be released in April from his detention without trial.

In a letter Shalabi distributed before her release, she explained that she did not accept the IDF West Bank Prosecutor´s offer out of weakness, rather she wanted to continue on the path of Khader Adnan."

Shalabi´s father, Yehia, said that since the exchange his daughter had not been active in Islamic Jihad.

Palestinian officials in both the West Bank and Gaza voiced objections to Shalabi´s deportation.

Islamic Jihad leader Khader Habib, who waited to greet Shalabi at the Erez crossing, said his faction had not been consulted about the deal.

Hussein al-Sheikh, an official in President Mahmoud Abbas´s Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, said last week "we were not part of the deal and we reject deportations." (© 1995-2011, The Jerusalem Post 04/02/12)