Israeli MPs vote for bid to force-feed Palestinian inmates
The Israeli regime’s legislators have voted to continue pursuing a bill to allow force-feeding of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike while opponents insist the move is intended as a form of torture to silence protesting inmates.
The vote passed Monday evening with a slim majority at the Israeli Knesset. The controversial legislation, which could soon be fast-tracked into law, would enable the regime’s prison facilities to seek official authorization to force-feed Palestinian inmates if a doctor rules their hunger strikes involve health risks.
The measure is meant to replicate a similar tactic used at US military facilities in Iraq’s Abu Gharib prison during its invasion of the country in 2003-11 as well as in Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.
This is while the Israeli regime’s Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan told the Knesset last month that “security prisoners are interested in turning a hunger strike into a new type of suicide terrorist attack through which they will threaten… Israel. We will not allow anyone to threaten us and we will not allow prisoners to die in our prisons," according to Israeli press reports.
Meanwhile, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has censured the Tel Aviv regime for the proposed bill.
“Israel’s force-feeding bill contravenes established medical ethics, which unequivocally prohibit force-feeding as a form of inhuman and degrading treatment,” said PHR’s senior anti-torture fellow Sarah Dougherty as cited in an RT report on Tuesday.
“Medical professionals should never be used as instruments to inflict harmful and coercive measures on detainees and to violate their human rights. We join our colleagues around the world in urging" the Israeli regime "to immediately reject this bill,” Dougherty added.
She further emphasized, “Hunger-striking is often the only means detainees have available to protest unlawful detention and inhumane conditions. People have a right to make their own decisions about their health and to refuse unwanted treatment, and medical personnel must respect this fundamental principle.”
Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are increasingly resorting to hunger strikes to protest both their indefinite detention with no charges and being denied the right to a legal trial.
This is while over 7,000 Palestinians are reportedly incarcerated in over a dozen Israeli prisons and detention camps.
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