RAMALLAH, June 14, 2015 (WAFA) – The Palestinian detainees and ex-detainees affairs committee condemned on Sunday the Israeli Knesset’s passing of a first reading of a draft legislation allowing the prison service to force-feed Palestinian hunger-striking prisoners detained in Israeli jails.
The new bill, which was proposed by the former Israeli government in 2014, was revived again by new Public Security Minister, Gilad Erdan, who stated that “Security prisoners are interested in turning hunger strikes into a new kind of suicide attack that would threaten the State of Israel. We cannot allow anyone to threaten us and we will not allow prisoners to die in our prisons,” Erdan told the Times of Israel.
According to Times of Israel, “The legislation comes as activists have warned that one hunger striking Palestinian prisoner is in critical condition and other security detainees have threatened to join him, bringing renewed attention to the issue.”
Erdan said he would seek to push the bill through the Knesset as soon as possible, it said.
The new bill is scheduled to go for a second and third reading at the Knesset for final approval before becoming a law.
The committee expressed grave concern over this way of thinking, and its subsequent results, including unethical and inhumane practices, citing the cases of three Palestinian prisoners; Ali al-Gabari, Rasim Halaweh, and Ishaq Mraghweh, who were killed in the early 80s as a result of being forced fed while on a hunger strike.
It stressed that it is time to put an end to the Israeli ‘madness’ that ‘shamelessly’ targets Palestinian prisoners, calling on all humanitarian and human rights organizations as well as the international community to break its silence and promptly move to put an end to such measures.
The Israeli Knesset attempted to legalize this bill back in 2014, a move that was met with wide condemnation, including by the Israeli Medical Association (IMA), which stated that, “We respect prisoners’ decision to organize a hunger-strike and that the physician’s duty is to help hunger-striking detainees stay alive, stressing that force-feeding is illegal.”
'Any doctor who feeds prisoners by force violates the ethics of the profession,' Healthcare in Detention Coordinator at ICRC Raed Abu Rabi told Israel Radio in June 2014.
Several Palestinian prisoners, including senior Hamas official Khader Adnan, are currently on a hunger strike to protest their illegal detention without charge or trial. Adnan has been refusing to take nourishment and salt and relies on water only, putting his life in danger.
“There is a broad consensus in international law and in the global medical community that force-feeding a prisoner on hunger strike against his will is forbidden, as it violates the prisoner’s right to autonomy over his body and to dignity, as well as breaching fundamental rules in medical ethics,” said B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.
T.R/M.H
