Palestinian Back on Hunger Strike as Israel Renews Detention
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Palestinian prisoner Muhammad Allan rejected meals for the second day on Thursday after being re-detained a day ago by Israeli authorities.
Allan declared a new hunger strike Wednesday after Israeli authorities arrested him and reinstated his internment without trial, his lawyer Jamil al-Khatib said, the Ma'an News Agency reported.
Allan was detained as he was leaving Barzilai Medical Center in the city of Ashkelon, Occupied Palestine, where he was recovering from his previous hunger strike, which lasted more than two months and brought him close to death.
Following his arrest, Israeli forces transferred Allan to Ramla prison hospital, the head of the Palestinian Prisoner's Society, Qadura Fares, said on Wednesday.
Allan's previous hunger strike was in protest of his 'administrative detention' -- an Israeli policy in which prisoners can be held without charge or trial for renewable six-month periods,indefinitely.
Allan had been held without charge or trial for seven months before he started a 66-day hunger strike against his detention, which he ended after Israeli authorities agreed to suspend his administrative detention.
Fares told Ma'an on Wednesday that Israeli authorities had detained Allan with the intention that the hunger striker would fulfill the rest of the six-month period of administrative detention he was sentenced to in May, which will last until Nov. 4.
However, he added: "It doesn't mean he will be released then."
Allan's administrative detention was initially ordered by Israeli officials who claimed that he constituted a threat to security and was an activist in the Islamic Jihad group, according to prisoners' rights group Addameer.
Rights group Amnesty International warned at the time of Allan's release that Israel's suspension of his administrative detention was based on his medical condition alone and "took no account of the (il)legality of his detention," raising fears that Allan could be re-sentenced if his health improved.
Israel's policy of administrative detention, which is almost exclusively used to detain Palestinians, has been strongly criticized by the international community.
