Palestinian detainee Mohammad Allan suspended his hunger strike, Friday morning, the head of the legal unit at the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) told Ma’an.Jawad Boulos visited Allan in the Ramla jail medical clinic on Friday, two days after being rearrested by Israeli authorities while leaving the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon.
Boulos said that Allan decided to suspend his protest action at being imprisoned without charge following consultations about his health and legal status.
The detainee cannot walk and was using a wheelchair during the visit, Boulos said, adding that his health is being closely monitored.
The PPS director said he is in contact with Israeli officials to reach a solution for Allan’s cause.
Allan resumed his hunger strike following his rearrest on Wednesday.
He had been held without charge or trial for seven months before he started a 66-day hunger strike against his detention, which he ended after Israeli authorities agreed to suspend his administrative detention.
Rights group Amnesty International warned at the time of Allan’s release that Israel’s suspension of his administrative detention was based on his medical condition alone and ‘took no account of the legality of his detention,’ raising fears that Allan could be re-sentenced if his health improved.
Israel’s policy of administrative detention, which is almost exclusively used to detain Palestinians, has been strongly criticized by the international community as well as both Israeli and Palestinian rights activists.
Hunger strikes rock Israeli jails
PPS called Friday for increasing public and media support to Palestinian prisoners that have been on a hunger strike for a month against harsh restrictions imposed by the Israeli Prison Service.
Nidal Abu Aker, 48, Shadi Maali, 39, and Ghassan Zawahreh, 32, from the Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem as well as Munir Abu Sharar, 32, from the Hebron area and Badr al-Ruzza, 26, from Nablus began their hunger strike on Aug. 20.
Suleiman Iskafi, 30, from Hebron is also continuing his open hunger strike that he started on Sept. 1, PPS said.
Iskafi has been in administrative detention since Nov. 12, 2014 and had previously spent a total of six years in Israeli jails.
Palestinian detainees regularly use hunger strikes, one of the only methods at their disposal, in effort to counter treatment by Israeli authorities and prison services that the international community has in the past deemed illegal and inhumane.
Treatment often includes sanctions imposed on hunger strikers, the denial of family visits, torture, isolation, lack of due process, and arbitrary detention.
According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the majority of prisoners who go on hunger strike are Palestinians in administrative detention.
The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, approved a law in July allowing the Israeli Prison Service to force feed hunger strikers if their condition becomes life-threatening, sparking outcry from rights groups and medical experts.
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