Israel Offers to Free Palestinian Hunger Striker if He Leaves the Country

Earlier this month, a Palestinian non-governmental organization said that almost 150 prisoners have gone on hunger strike since the beginning of August.

Allan told doctors that unless a solution was found to his plight within 24 hours “he would stop taking anything including vitamins and water”, Bolus said.

The hospital said doctors, reporting an improvement in his condition, weaned him off a respirator on Tuesday and cut his sedation, and that Allaan was “conscious and communicating”.

After an attack by Jewish extremists against Israel’s military, Netanyahu’s previous government vowed tougher measures against home-grown militants but rejected a bill seeking to define the attacks as acts of terrorism.

Awwad had arranged the visit with Israeli authorities; however guards at the prison would not allow him access to the Barzilai Medical Centre in Ashkelon to visit a Palestinian prisoner who has been on hunger strike for 62 days. Ze’ev Elkin, the minister of immigration and absorption, told Channel 10 on Sunday, as cited by the Jerusalem Post, that Israel can not accept his demands to be released from administrative detention. His lawyer, Jamil al-Khatib, petitioned the court for his release.

On July 30, the Knesset passed a controversial law allowing force-feeding of hunger strikers with a court order. Netanyahu bitterly opposes the deal, and with U.S.-Israel ties suffering, the prospects for any new U.S. diplomatic initiative seem poor.

The justice ministry released a statement ahead of the hearing that included an offer to free Allan, a lawyer from northern West Bank town Einabus, “if he agrees to go overseas for a period of four years”.

“Israeli authorities consider anyone who has parents or grandparents who were born or lived in the West Bank or Gaza to have a claim to a PA ID”.

According to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, the number of Palestinian held under administrative detention in Israeli occupation jails had reached 370 by June 2015.

Benedetta Berti, a political analyst at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), believes that officials offered the deal to Allan’s representatives to avoid exacerbating confrontations already taking place in the West Bank.

Allan has been on hunger strike for more than two months in protest against his prolonged detention without charge or trial.

“I know that my son did nothing”.

Israel’s parliament approved the law two weeks after authorities freed Islamic Jihad member Khader Adnan following a 56-day hunger strike that brought him near death. In his current state, a patient like Allan “cannot declare what he would want at this specific point”, and that all treatment up to now had been in keeping with Israel’s medical ethics and patient’s rights policies, Birmanns said.