Palestinian Prisoner Ends Hunger Strike After Court Suspends Detention
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Palestinian detainee Mohammed Allan ended his 65-day hunger strike against his detention without trial on Wednesday after the Israeli Supreme Court suspended his arrest warrant, his lawyer said.
Allan has sustained brain damage as result of his hunger strike and is hospitalized in Israel in critical condition. The court said that in his current condition he poses no threat and therefore suspended his arrest warrant.
The 31-year-old Islamic Jihad activist’s case was being monitored closely by opposing sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which had looked likely to boil over into new violence if Allan were to have died as result of his strike.
“The story is over, administrative detention is canceled and therefore there is no strike,” Allan’s lawyer, Jameel Khatib, told Reuters.
The Israeli government saw his hunger strike as a powerful challenge against “administrative detention,” a practice that has drawn criticism from Palestinians and human rights groups but which Israel calls necessary for its national security.
It fears his release would only encourage some 370 other Palestinian detainees held without charge to refuse food.
The court said Allan was to stay at the Israeli hospital where he was being treated.
Before Wednesday’s court session got under way, Allan’s lawyers said that in return for an end to the strike, Israel had pledged not to renew his six-month detention period, meaning he would go free on Nov. 3.
The hospital said Allan’s condition had deteriorated since he was brought out of sedation on Tuesday. His attorneys said he did not respond to the proposal.
In court, a government lawyer said Israel was prepared to free Allan immediately if a scan carried out while court was in session showed that he had suffered irreversible brain damage and subsequently no longer posed a security threat.
But the scan results were not conclusive. Barzilai hospital chief Chezy Levy told reporters it showed some brain damage and it was not yet clear whether it was “completely reversible.” He said it was possible Allan would recover.
On Tuesday Allan instructed medical staff to halt intravenous treatment, but then agreed vitamins could be administered in the run-up to the court hearing.
Allan’s case was originally seen as a possible test of Israel’s new force-feeding law, which the country’s medical association has condemned as a violation of ethics and international conventions. But doctors have said that option is no longer viable due to his grave condition.
Last week supporters of Allan clashed with Israeli right-wingers near the hospital. Israel has long been concerned that hunger strikes by Palestinians in its jails could end in deaths and trigger waves of protests in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
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