Zionist Regime's Knesset Approves Force-Feeding Bill
The bill authorizes the Israeli Prison Service to submit a request to the District Court to obtain a permit for force-feeding the hunger-striking prisoners.
Hebrew Haaretz newspaper earlier revealed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had exerted pressure on the coalition government members to pass the force-feeding law to put an end to the hunger strike declared almost 50 days ago to protest administrative detention policy.
Arab MKs strongly opposed the bill along with MKs from the leftist Meretz party, while the extreme Likud member Moshe Feiglin disagreed, however, arguing that the bill places too much importance on the strikers.
"What is this idea of force-feeding?” he asked. “If people want to die, let them die - it's not our problem”.
Although international law restricts the use of force-feeding for its serious implications on hunger strikers' lives, the Israeli cabinet approved its use.
Along the few past decades, three Palestinian hunger-striking prisoners died in Israeli jails after being forced-fed despite the fact that force-feeding policy is criminalized by international laws and human rights institutions.
The lawyer Fadi Qawasmeh said that Israeli authorities started discussing force-feeding law since Palestinian prisoners adopted individual and collective hunger strikes as a resistance tool in Israeli jails over the past several years with different objectives.
Prior specific measures are still in need to be implemented before enacting the law, he said.
Israeli authorities have asked for the opinion of the ethics committee which in turn refused to deal with force-feeding law as a torture means, Qawasmeh told PIC reporter.
The striker would be fed through a feeding tube which will be shoved up his nose, down his esophagus and into his stomach. As a result, the hunger striker would be held in hospital during force-feeding operation and nothing would be changed or solved, the lawyer added.
Israeli authorities still refuse negotiating hunger strikers' demands to end administrative detention, he pointed out.
For his part, the director of Hurriyat (freedoms) center Hilmi Al-Araj told PIC reporter that force-feeding law is criminalized by all world medical associations and Declaration of Malta and Tokyo on hunger strikers (2006).
He said that instead of meeting the hunger strikers' legitimate demands to end administrative detention and medical negligence policies, Israeli authorities are putting their lives at risk through approving force-feeding bill.
Al-Araj warned of passing such a bill that would kill the prisoners; noting that three martyrs died after being force-fed namely Abdul Qader Abu Fahm in Ashkelon prison in 1970, and Rasim Halawa and Ali Jabari in Nafha prison in 1980.
Source: Palestine Info
