Over the weekend the case of a Palestinian man has put the law to the test. Mohammed Allan, 31, fell unconscious after entering his 60th day on hunger strike.
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Israel imprisoned Allan from 2006-2009 on charges of involvement with Islamic Jihad’s militant activities.
Ma’an also reported that Palestinian former MK Talab al-Sane confronted the medical center’s director about providing Allan with intravenous salts and vitamins while he is unconsciousness, al-Sane describing the process as “manipulating his free will”. Netanyahu bitterly opposes the deal, and with U.S.-Israel ties suffering, the prospects for any new U.S. diplomatic initiative seem poor.
On Monday, hundreds of Palestinians in Hebron staged a peaceful rally in the southern West Bank city’s centre, waving Palestinian flags and holding Allan’s picture while calling for his release.
A nearly two-month hunger strike by a Palestinian detainee now in a coma may test a controversial new Israeli law on force-feeding, with doctors vowing to refuse to carry it out.
There are reportedly around 1,500 Palestinian prisoners being held in the prison, 250 of whom are being held in administrative detention. (He was released in 2012 after a 66-day hunger strike, also from administrative detention.) Adnan was released on 11 July.
“The State of Israel can’t allow itself to be held hostage to hunger strikes by prisoners because today it’s one prisoner and tomorrow it will be others”, Elkin said, as cited by the Jerusalem Post. “They wanted to prevent us from showing solidarity with a person that the state is punishing for no fault of his own”.
Yoel Hadar, the legal advisor to Israel’s Public Security Minister and a drafter of the bill, said the law is meant to save prisoners’ lives and protect doctors who carry out the force-feeding from any subsequent legal action.
“This was a test for us”, said Dr. Tami Karni, a Tel Aviv surgeon and the ethics chairwoman of the Israeli Medical Association, whose 22,000 members comprise nearly all doctors in Israel.
A Barzilai physician said on Monday Allan would likely die in a very short time if no medical assistance was given.
Allan, a 31-year-old lawyer from the West Bank village of Ainabus, stopped eating in mid-June.
Since then, Israeli hospitals have been successful in keeping hunger strikers alive without resorting to the practice, according to Walden.
Force-feeding requires restraining a conscious and shackled prisoner and inserting a tube into the stomach. Rubinstein urged the sides to reach a compromise on the matter, which has forced tensions to flare and sparked a debate in Israel over the ethics of the country’s new force-feeding law.
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Adalah, the rights group who submitted the petition for Allan’s release rejected the gesture.
