العربي الديمقراطي The Latest From The Arab World
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Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erakat on Wednesday called for immediate international action against Israel regarding its detention of over a 100 Palestinians who have been on a hunger strike since they were held without charges.
“I am writing on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization and President Mahmud Abbas to request your immediate intervention on behalf of the approximately 130 Palestinian detainees and prisoners currently on hunger strike in Israeli prisons. We call on you to call on Israel to annul the policy of administrative detention and to condition deepening your bilateral ties with Israel pending Israel’s fulfillment of all its obligations”, he wrote in the letter issued on Tuesday and sent to EU member states, South Africa, India and Brazil.
Administrative detention dates back to pre-1948 British Mandate. Under administrative detention, a suspect can be held without charge by a military court for up to six months, a period which can, however, be renewed indefinitely.
Erakat’s letter was also sent to members of the UN Security Council, but not to Australia, which had recently said that it would not refer to annexed East Jerusalem as “occupied” anymore – the move had infuriated Palestinian leadership, who want the city to be the capital of its future state.
According to the Israel Prison Service, 250 inmates are currently on hunger strike. 90 inmates have been on strike for over six weeks now, and 75 of them have been hospitalized.Sivan Weizman, spokeswoman for the Israel Prison Service, said that this is the longest mass hunger strike by Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. Around 5,000 Palestinians are inmates in Israeli prisons, and almost 200 of them are under administrative detention.
Israeli lawmakers have pushed ahead their plans for a bill which would allow doctors to force feed hunger strikers.
The Israeli parliament on Monday approved the bill’s first reading. The bill is now in committee, and needs two more plenum votes before it becomes a law. Left-wing, liberal and Arab lawmakers have objected to the bill, along with the Israel Medical Association, which wrote to Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, and urged him to block the bill.
The letter, signed by Dr Leonid Edelman, the organization’s head, and Professor Avionam Reches, the chairman of the organization’s ethics bureau, said that force feeding is dangerous and “is against the non-maleficence principle”.
It warned that the move would be “in total contradiction to internationally-accepted medical ethics”.
“The proposed law is wrong ethically and professionally, it won’t only damage the patients and their medical condition, but also Israel’s world standing. We can’t accept a law that places doctors in a battle they should have no part of, in total contrast to their professional and ethical duties”, they wrote.