Hunger striker gives Israel one more day
Palestinian held without charge says ‘resolve case’
JERUSALEM // A Palestinian detainee on a two-month hunger strike emerged from a coma yesterday but pledged to resume fasting if Israel did not resolve his case within 24 hours. Mohammed Allan, 31, “declared in front of his doctors that if there is not any solution to his case within 24 hours he will ask for all treatment to stop and will stop drinking water”, the Palestinian Prisoners Club said.
Mr Allan, a lawyer from the West Bank town of Einabus, has been jailed since November under what Israel calls administrative detention, which allows people to be held without charge for six-month intervals that can be renewed indefinitely. He went on hunger strike on June 18, taking only water, and fell into a coma on Thursday night.
Doctors have since been giving him water, vitamins and salts intravenously and connected him to a respirator.
The prisoners club said that after regaining consciousness Mr Allan “agreed after detailed explanations about his condition to take some supplements for 24 hours while he waits for a resolution to his case”.
Israel’s high court will today continue hearing a petition by Mr Allan’s lawyers calling for his release on medical grounds.
One of the doctors treating Mr Allan told the court on Monday that he was likely to go into a fatal decline if he resumed his hunger strike.
There are fears of violence escalating if Mr Allan dies from his hunger strike, and there have been clashes between his Palestinian supporters and Jewish opponents near the Israeli hospital where he is being held under guard.
The Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog warned yesterday of a fresh Palestinian uprising and called for a resumption of peace negotiations after a meeting with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.
“We agreed on the fact that on the ground in recent weeks and days there is a deterioration, there is an escalation in terror activities,” said Mr Herzog at the Ramallah headquarters of Mr Abbas’s Palestinian Authority.
“I told the president that fighting terror and preventing terror activities is of utmost priority to us,” he said.
Tensions have soared in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in recent weeks after the firebombing of a Palestinian home in the village of Duma, attributed to Jewish extremists, which killed an 18-month-old child and his father.
Three young Palestinians were shot dead in the past eight days during what the Israeli army said were stabbing attempts on its forces in the West Bank.