JERUSALEM // A Palestinian prisoner held without charge in Israel ended his two-month hunger strike on Thursday, a day after Israel’s supreme court suspended his detention.
The case of Mohammed Allan’s 66-day strike tested a new Israeli law allowing force-feeding, which has been criticised by many doctors who say the practice amounts to torture.
It also cast light on Israel’s practice of imprisoning Palestinians for lengthy periods without charge or trial, which it calls “administrative detention”.
Mr Allan’s lawyer, Jamil Khatib, said that his client’s condition was serious but stable. He cautioned that it could take several weeks to know the full extent of the damage that he had sustained from the strike.
Earlier in the day, Mr Allan regained consciousness after being placed in a medically induced coma on Wednesday after a deterioration in his condition.
Dr Hezy Levy of Israel’s Barzilai hospital said that his condition had greatly improved.
“We took him off the respirator. He’s no longer sedated,” Dr Levy said. “He is starting to communicate and I am happy that medically he is on the right path.”
The doctor said he hoped that Mr Allan would soon start eating again on his own. His body cannot yet process food after such a prolonged fast.
The 31-year-old had been held since November in detention without charge, which was temporarily lifted by Wednesday’s supreme court ruling.
However, the court said that he must remain in hospital pending a final decision on his case.
Israel said the detention was applied to Mr Allan for his affiliation with Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian militant group that has carried out scores of attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers. Mr Allan denies the affiliation.
Israeli prosecutors told the court on Wednesday that they would release Mr Allan if he were found to have irreversible brain damage.
He was said to be suffering brain damage, apparently because of a vitamin deficiency caused by the hunger strike. It was still not known whether this damage was permanent.
When doctors placed Mr Allan in a coma on Wednesday, it was the second time that he had been in a coma since last week. He slipped into the first coma last Friday, prompting doctors to give him fluids, vitamins and minerals intravenously and to place him on a respirator.
His condition improved, and on Tuesday he was conscious and taken off the respirator.
Adalah, a rights group that petitioned the court for Mr Allan’s release, said that judges should have acted on his petition to be freed when it was first filed on Monday.
“The court may have accepted the petition but this occurred after Mohammed Allan’s case became extremely cruel and inhumane, and brought him to the brink of death,” the group said.
Hardline members of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government viewed the ruling as giving in to a hunger strike that they saw as “blackmail”.
* Associated Press, Agence France-Presse
