Palestinian held under administration detention on hunger strike in ‘immediate risk of death‘

posted on: Aug 12, 2015

Muhammad Allan, a Palestinian in Israeli administrative detention, has been on hunger strike for 58 days. Allan has been moved from Soroka hospital in Beersheba to the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon sparking concerns he will be forced fed, Ma’an news reports.
According Physicians for Human Rights, Israeli doctors are refusing to treat him against his will.

Hadas Ziv who works with the Physicians for Human Rights-Israel said it appeared that the transfer was issued because doctors objected to the method of force feeding, Al Jazeera reported. Doctors at Beersheba had previously refused to carry out blood tests against without Allan’s permission.

Allan’s health has steadily deteriorated over the past two months since he began refusing food in protest of his detention without charge or trial since last November. The International Committee of the Red Cross warned on Friday that Allan was “at immediate risk” of death.
 
The director of Ashkelon’s Barzilai Medical Center, Dr Hezi Levy, said on Monday that he would refuse to allow the force-feeding of a Palestinian hunger striker, Ynet reported.
 
Jamil al-Khatib, Allan’s attorney told AFP Saturday that Israeli judicial officials, “informed [him] of the intention to proceed with the force feeding of Mr Allan.”
 
If carried out it would be the first case since the adoption last month of a new law permitting the practice.
 
The Israeli parliament approved a law July allowing prisoners on hunger strike facing death to be force fed. Allan would be the first person to be treated this way since the law’s adoption.
 
Israeli Mk Haneen Zoabi was among political figures to voice concern at the move telling Reuters news agency of her dismay at the ongoing practice of administrative detention and its repercussions.
 
“We are talking about administrative detention which is illegal and against human rights where they arrest people on political background without evidence, without indictment, without fair trial and against the torture law of force-feeding, which even the stance of Israeli doctors is clear about it that it’s an intrusive and argumentative law that risks the lives of security prisoners,” Zoabi told Reuters.
Chairman of the Israel Medical Association Dr Leonid Eidelman told Ynet that he would petition the High Court of Justice in a bid to ban force-feeding.

“Our position is firm and unchanged: Force-feeding is torture. Physicians are ethically bound to refrain from taking part in it, whether it takes place in prison, in hospital or in a specially designed clinic. Torture is torture,” Eidelman said.

Source: www.palestinemonitor.org