Proposed legislation to permit the force-feeding of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike is pitting Israel’s government against the country’s main doctors’ association and other rights groups, which contend the practice amounts to torture.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly asked to fast-track the bill as a hunger strike by dozens of Palestinian detainees entered its sixth week.
At least 65 of 290 participating detainees have been hospitalized since the first group began a hunger strike on April 24. Many are administrative detainees, held for months or years without charges.
There have been near-daily Palestinian demonstrations backing the prisoners, including one in the West Bank on Wednesday in which dozens of university students threw stones at Israeli soldiers who responded with tear gas.
Families of hunger strikers say they support the fast, despite the risks.
“My husband is in Israeli jails without knowing why and when this nightmare is going to end,” Lamees Faraj said of her husband, Abdel Razeq, a member of a small, hard-line Palestine Liberation Organization faction who has been in administrative detention for nearly eight of the last 20 years.
Faced with the second large-scale Palestinian hunger strike in two years, Israel’s government is promoting a bill that would allow a judge to sanction force-feeding if an inmate’s life is perceived to be in danger.
A judge must not only consider the prisoner’s wishes, but also possible damage to the state, said Yoel Hadar, a legal adviser in the Public Security Ministry, which initiated the bill.
A death in custody could trigger prison riots or unrest in the Palestinian territories or elsewhere, he said. “We want the judge to take into consideration what will happen to the country if something happens,” Hadar said.
There has been mounting opposition from Israel’s medical establishment, with the Israel Medical Association urging physicians not to cooperate.
“It goes against the DNA of the doctors to force treatment on a patient,” spokeswoman Ziva Miral said. “Force-feeding is torture, and we can’t have doctors participating in torture.”
She noted that the World Medical Association, an umbrella for national medical associations, opposes the practice. The WMA said as recently as 2006 that “forcible feeding is never ethically acceptable.”
Israel’s National Council of Bioethics has also weighed in, saying it opposes the proposed bill.
Another group, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, contacted the World Medical Association last month, asking that it help stop the legislation.
In a letter to the WMA, the Israeli group reiterated the ethical concerns raised by others and added that “the true motivation … is to break the spirit and protests of the hunger strikers.”
Despite such criticism, Netanyahu told his Cabinet this week he’ll make sure to find physicians who will participate in force-feeding, noting that force-feeding is carried out at the U.S.-run Guantanamo Bay detention camp for suspected militants, the Haaretz daily said.
Netanyahu’s spokesman, Mark Regev, declined to comment on the report, but confirmed the government supports the bill.
The U.S.-based Physicians for Human Rights said it is currently not aware of prisoners being force-fed anywhere except Guantanamo, but that it is often difficult to get access to prisons to verify their practices. There have, however, been past cases of force-feeding, including of prisoners from Germany’s radical leftist Red Army Faction in the 1970s.
Hadar said force-feeding would be a last resort. Hunger strikers would be represented in legal hearings and physicians would not be compelled to participate, he said.
He said force-feeding is meant to save lives, while acknowledging other considerations at play.
“People go on a hunger strike for political reasons … and the consequence could be political damage to the state,” he said. “The state also has the right to stop the strike.”
Qadoura Fares, an advocate for Palestinian prisoners, said Palestinians would seek international condemnation of Israel if the legislation is passed.
About the Author
