PALESTINIAN hunger striker Mohammad Allan was forcibly removed from Soroka hospital in Beersheba and taken to the Barzilai Medical Centre in Ashdod, by Israeli forces yesterday.
He will be held there while an Israeli court deliberates over wether to enforce the Guantánamo Bay procedure of force feeding – an act considered by the UN to violate the fundamental human right to peaceful protest.
Israeli TV Channel 10 reported that the Prison Authority decided to move Allan from Soroka hospital in Beersheba to Barzilai, because the Soroka administration was not willing to force feed him. Barzilai Medical Centre in Ashdod, however did express willingness to force-feed Mohammad Allan.
It said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to set up a special unit in Barzilai to force-feed hunger-striking Palestinian detainees, without having to deal with the Israeli Medical Association and the many physicians who refuse to perform the practice of force-feeding. Force-feeding is a very critical and dangerous procedure that can lead to deadly outcomes.
A video circulating on social media under the title ‘Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def) force fed under standard Guantánamo Bay procedure’ shows a man who volunteered to being force-fed in order to demonstrate the brutality of this practice. As seen in the video, when prisoners are force-fed they are first strapped into a chair to prevent them from moving during the operation.
The head is strapped using a black belt to the chair and the hands and feet are tightly secured as well. The clip shows a doctor preparing a see-through plastic tube. He begins to insert it through the nose of the prisoner and pushes it for few minutes until it reaches the stomach. Meanwhile, the man volunteering in the experiment is seen struggling and his feet and hands twitching in pain.
In the video, the man in an orange suit begins to scream and begs the doctors to stop the procedure.
He finally breaks into sobs after they take the tube out. The clip demonstrates the brutality of force-feeding prisoners, with the intention to highlight the procedure which took place in Guantánamo Bay Detention Centre. The procedure takes two hours to complete and, typically, is repeated multiple times throughout the day. The man in the clip, who is still recovering from the procedure, describes it as ‘unbearable’.
Allan, an Islamic Jihad activist and an attorney, has seen a significant deterioration in his health after 58 days of hunger strike against administrative detention, a measure that allows Israel to imprison detainees without charge and for renewable periods of time. He was arrested in November 2014 and was placed in administrative detention since then.
Allan went on a hunger strike to protest against his illegal detention without charge or trial and is currently facing the risk of being force-fed, despite wide international condemnation of such practice. While the United Nations considers hunger strike as ‘a non-violent form of protest used by individuals who have exhausted other forms of protest to highlight the seriousness of their situations’, on July 30, the Israeli parliament, Knesset, approved the second and third reading of a legislation allowing the force-feeding of hunger striking Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails.
The legislation, passed by Israeli Knesset in July, reflected Israel’s concern that hunger strikes by Palestinians in its jails could end in death and trigger waves of protests in the occupied West Bank. Ahead of the bill’s approval, Issa Qaraqe, Chairman of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Affairs Commission, said the law legalises the murder of Palestinian hunger striking detainees. ‘It’s against the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law; it legalises torture of prisoners who are demanding their rights in a non-violent way.’
He asked for a meeting of state parties to the Geneva Conventions to take a stand against the law and demand Israel not to apply it. The UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Juan E. Méndez, has called ‘feeding induced by threats, coercion, force or use of physical restraints of individuals, who have opted for the extreme recourse of a hunger strike to protest against their detention. . . tantamount to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, even if intended for their benefit’.
Meanwhile, member of the Israeli parliament Basel Ghattas, in a letter on Monday, has warned the director of Barzilai Medical Centre (BMC) Hezi Levi against allowing the force-feeding of Allan. Ghattas called on Levi to abide by the ethics of the medical profession, which all consider force-feeding a form of torture. Ghattas asked him not to turn BMC into a new ‘Guantánamo’.
l Israeli forces, early on Monday morning demolished a Palestinian house in Deir Ballut town to the west of Salfit as well as two residential structures and a livestock barn in Adh-Dhahiriya town to the south of Hebron. Israeli forces, escorting two bulldozers, raided the town, where they demolished a Palestinian house under construction belonging to Adnan Abdullah in the Khallet Qasul locality, to the south of Deir Ballut. This was the second time that Abduallah’s house was demolished.
It was demolished about a year and a half ago in the same spot in Khallet Qasul, a locality in Area C that has over 60 Palestinian houses and is considered one of the areas that regularly receive stop-construction and demolition notices. Local media reported on Abdullah as saying although he submitted proper building permits, he was served a notice two months ago to demolish his house, prompting him to leave no stone unturned in order to halt the implementation of this notice, but with no avail.
Furthermore, forces demolished two residential structures and a livestock barn in Adh-Dhahiriya village of Ar-Rahwa. Israeli soldiers escorting a bulldozer, raided the village, where they proceeded to demolish two residential structures and a livestock barn belonging to Farhan As-Samamra, displacing 24 people.
Meanwhile, forces served demolition notices for several Palestinian houses near al-Hamra permanent military checkpoint on Road 57 controlled by Israeli authorities. All Palestinians whose houses are located to the north of the checkpoint were handed notices, giving them only ten days to evict their homes as a prelude to demolition. Also early on Monday, morning Israeli forces detained six Palestinians and summoned another from West Bank districts, said security sources.
Israeli forces raided the Jenin city neighbourhoods of Jabal Abu Dhuheir and al-Marah, where they proceeded to break into several homes and interrogate their homeowners. Two of the interrogated homeowners were identified as Muhammad An-Nasra and his son, Hani. During the pre-dawn raid, forces detained four Palestinians identified as Jehad Arqawi, 26, Ahmad Khalaf, 25, Yahya Najm, 19, and Awad al-Jamal, 24.
Meanwhile in Jerusalem, police detained a Palestinian after breaking into and ransacking his house in Beit Hanina town. The detainee was identified as Wisam Kastiro.
