adminJerusalem — 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, a Palestinian group said.
Mohammed Allan, 31, “declared in front of his doctors that if there isn’t any solution to his case within 24 hours, he’ll ask for all treatment to stop and will stop drinking water”, the Palestinian Prisoners Club said.
Allan, held by Israel without charge since November, went on hunger strike in protest on June 18, taking only water. He fell into a coma on Thursday night.
Doctors have since been intravenously giving him water, vitamins and salts and he was connected to a respirator.
The prisoners club said that after regaining consciousness Allan “has agreed after detailed explanations about his condition situation 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 Allan’s lawyers calling for his release on medical grounds.
At a hearing on Monday, one of the doctors treating Allan said that if he were to resume his hunger strike he was likely to go into a fatal decline.
The Justice Ministry released a statement ahead of Monday’s hearing that included an offer to free Allan, a lawyer from the northern West Bank town of Einabus, “if he agrees to go abroad for a period of four years”.
His lawyer immediately dismissed the proposal.
Tensions have soared in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in recent weeks in the wake of 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.
There are fears of violence escalating if Allan dies from his hunger strike, and there have been clashes between his Israeli Arab and Palestinian supporters and Jewish opponents near the Israeli hospital where he is being held under guard. — AFP
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