TEL AVIV, June 11, 2014 – (WAFA) – The Israeli Health Ministry prevents independent doctors from examining hunger-striking prisoners, reported Wednesday the Israeli daily of Haaretz.

According to Haaretz, the Israeli ministry places strict restrictions on visit to hunger-striking prisoners by private doctors in a practice that adopts the approach set by Shin Bet, Israel’s security service, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on how to deal with prisoners.

The newspaper also reported that the ministry has rejected requests submitted by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), an Israeli organization, and the lawyer hired by prisoners’ families to allow independent doctors to visit hunger-striking prisoners being hospitalized at Israeli hospitals.

The organization said that Talia Agmon, Medical Ethics and Biotechnology Officer at the ministry, instructed Israeli hospitals to deny the organization’s doctors access into hunger-striking prisoners.

These instructions fall in line with the ministry’s policy stipulating that the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) is the responsible authority to the whole issue of access to prisoners while in hospital, the IPS in coordination with the ministry Emergency Department will define the visitors whom have a permission to enter and that any entry of a physician must be coordinated with the management of hospitals of the relevant departments. 

“Doctors for Human Rights or any other NGO have no authority to monitor treatment in our hospitals or give directions to our staffs,” Agmon said.

The organization reported that hunger-striking prisoners being treated in Israeli hospitals are subject to inhumane treatment, that they are handcuffed and leg-chained and that thei privacy is violated. 

Voicing deep concerns about hunger-striking prisoners’ lives, the organization demanded that prisoners have access to independent doctors at their request and that the ministry and IPS retract from their policy of obstructing doctors’ access to prisoners. 

It also demanded that the Israeli government retract from its intention to pass a bill allowing for forced feeding and enter into negotiation for a peaceful life-saving resolution of the hunger strike and that it along with Shen Bit end their sweeping policy of administrative detention.

K.F./T.R.