Israel authorises force-feeding of hunger-striking prisoners

The Israeli parliament has approved a law allowing prisoners on hunger strikes facing death to be force fed, sparking criticism from rights groups and medical experts.

The law had been vehemently opposed by the Israeli Medical Association, which warned it would “order doctors to act exclusively according to the rules of ethics, and not feed or nourish hunger strikers against their will”.

In a statement, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan who tabled the bill, said the law was a necessary measure to prevent prisoners securing political concessions from the government.

“When a state force-feeds competent prisoners who are making a decision to refuse food – whether it is the United States dealing with prisoners in Guantanamo or Israel dealing with Palestinians in the West Bank – it is violating their right to bodily autonomy and subjecting them to procedures that are inhumane and degrading”, Sarah Saadoun, Acting Israel and Palestine researcher at Human Rights Watch, told VICE News.

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel referred to as the regulation shameful. In the case of loss of consciousness, doctors must also be aware of the prisoners’ plans, the report says.

Physicians for Human Rights said there were no recorded instances of prisoners in Israel dying on hunger strike, while four had died from force-feeding.

According to figures released by the Israel Prison Service earlier this year, 396 Palestinians, including one woman, were still being held in administrative detention at the end of March.

Dr. Leonid Eideleman, chairman of the Israeli Medical Association, called passage of the force-feeding bill “a black day in the annals of Israeli legislation”. He called on the global community to “assume its responsibilities toward the Palestinian prisoners”, adding that the bill was in violation of worldwide laws and conventions.

Hunger strikes have become an important form of protest for Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons.

This was Adnan’s second extended hunger strike against his administrative detention; in 2012, Adnan won his release in a similar deal that ended a hunger strike. “The goal of the law is to defang their legitimate struggle under the guise of ‘preventing the damage caused by hunger strikes.'”. A member of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, Adnan had been arrested several times and held without charge.

Meanwhile, Palestinians condemned Thursday the passing of an Israeli law concerning the force-feeding of Palestinian prisoners incarcerated in Israeli jails who go on hunger strikes.