The head of the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said Sunday that Israeli medical procedures to keep Palestinian hunger striker Mohammad Allan alive were “unethical” and the society would ask for them to be halted.
Qadura Fares told Ma’an that doctors at Barzilai Medical Center in southern Israel had decided to prolong the hunger striker’s life “on his behalf,” although he said that he did not believe it amounted to force-feeding.
“They’re deciding on his behalf,” he said. “It’s unethical.”
Allan, who has been on hunger strike 62 days, slipped into a coma on Friday.
Since then, Barzilai Medical Center has connected the hunger striker to ventilators to assist his breathing, and also to give him fluids and sodium intravenously.
Jawad Bolous, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society’s chief lawyer, said Friday that the medical center was treating Allan according to Israel’s Patients’ Rights Act.
However, Fares said Sunday that the prisoners’ society no longer accepted the medical center’s methods.
“We will ask to stop this,” he said.
Physicians for Human Rights Israel said on Friday that once Allan lost consciousness “medical ethics requires that his doctors act in accordance to their understanding of the patient’s will and their discretion.”
On Friday, a former Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset, Talab al-Sane, said that providing Allan with nutrition while he was unconsciousness amounted to “manipulating his free will.”
Current Palestinian MKs, along with the Palestinian Authority Prisoners’ Affairs Committee, have called on Israel to allow a Palestinian doctor to examine the hunger striker.
However, Fares confirmed that Israel had so far not allowed a Palestinian doctor to visit Allan, and he was not aware of any plans for such a visit.
Fares added that he had no new information on Allan’s state of health.
Allan, a lawyer from the West Bank village of Einabus, went on hunger strike two months ago to protest his administrative detention — internment without trial or charge — under which he has been held in Israeli prisons since November.
His case has prompted fears that Israel will go ahead with a controversial new law passed in the Knesset last month allowing them to force feed hunger striking prisoners.
(Ma’an)
