Palestinian detainee vows to continue hunger strike after emerging from coma

Israel’s High Court began a hearing on Wednesday afternoon on whether to release him due to his health.

His lawyers rejected the proposal, saying Allaan poses no security threat, and the court, urging the sides to negotiate, scheduled another session for Wednesday.

On Monday, Israel said it would free Allaan if he agreed to leave the country for four years, but his lawyer rejected the offer. However, after he lost consciousness on Friday, Doctors have been treating him with infusions of vitamins, minerals and salts to keep him alive.

Palestinian resistance now has a new face – that of Mohammed Allan, who has been on a hunger strike in an Israeli prison since mid-June.

Doctors said Allan’s condition now remains stable but critical. “There are still a number of problems… and he is being treated accordingly”, she said, noting the hospital was considering taking him off the respirator.

There are fears that his death could lead to an escalation of violence in the occupied West Bank, with tensions having already increased following last month’s firebombing of a Palestinian home that killed an 18-month-old and his father. The Palestinians seek the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza — territories captured by Israel in 1967 — for a future state.

A police spokeswoman said a Palestinian approached officers conducting a routine security check in the West Bank and stabbed one in the back with a knife on Saturday.

On Aug. 9, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian who stabbed and lightly injured an Israeli civilian at a petrol station. Releasing him would be “a prize for his hunger strike, and will likely cause mass hunger strikes”.

Some 340 Palestinians are currently held in administrative detention, and detainees have regularly gone on hunger strike to protest.

He has been in custody since November 2014.

Allan’s fast is the first to test Israel’s law, passed narrowly in July, that allows a judge to sanction force-feeding or medical treatment if an inmate’s life is threatened, even if the prisoner refuses.

But medical groups and activists oppose the law, arguing it amounts to torture and robs Palestinians of a legitimate form of protest.

Israel and the Palestinians have held on-again, off-again peace talks over the past two decades, and the latest round of U.S.-brokered negotiations broke down more than a year ago with little progress.

Isaac Herzog, leader of Israel’s Zionist Union, issued his call after meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at his West Bank headquarters.