Mohammed Allan could trigger test for Israel force-feeding law

Detained Palestinian lawyer Mohammed Allan on a 64-day hunger strike emerged from a coma last night.

A Palestinian detainee and lawyer on a 64-day hunger strike emerged from a coma last night but pledged to resume fasting if ­Israel did not resolve his case within 24 hours.

Mohammed Allan “declared in front of his doctors that if there is not any solution to his case within 24 hours, he will ask for all treatment to stop and will stop drinking water,” the Palestinian Prisoners Club said last night

Israel had earlier flagged a deal to release the 31-year-old, who had vowed to die rather than submit to detention without trial, challenging an instrument of state security.

His legal team immediately rejected the tentative offer — conditional on a four-year exile — even though had been breathing through a respirator.

His deteriorating condition could bring on a test of a new law in Israel empowering authorities to force-feed prisoners to keep them alive, as well as focus fresh attention on the “administrative detention’’ of people accused by the Israelis of plotting terrorism or of involvement with terrorists.

This allows suspects to be jailed on rolling six-month terms in the absence of known charges, and until the horrifying firebombing of a Palestinian family home near Nablus killed an 18-month-old baby and his father on July 31, the measure had been reserved largely for Palestinians.

Mr Allan was arrested in November and has been held under consecutive detention orders ­accused of belonging to Islamic Jihad, responsible for rocket ­attacks and suicide bombings launched into Israel from the Gaza strip.

His family denies he has any such links, though he served as an activist and leader in the student wing of Islamic Jihad while attending university on the West Bank, contemporaries say.

Having taken only water while on hunger strike, he lost consciousness last week and developed lung failure.

In addition to being put on a breathing machine, he has been given intravenous fluids and salts but doctors have not carried out the physical examinations required to start force feeding under a law passed narrowly last month by the Knesset. This allows a judge to order the insertion of a stomach tube. Israel’s Medical Association is challenging the law in court and has appealed to doctors to defy it.

The dilemma for the national government is that bowing to Mr Allan’s demands could undermine the force-feeding provisions as well as set a new precedent for appeals against the 370 administrative detention ­orders in force against Palestinians, by the count of Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.

His condition, however, has already sparked clashes between protesters outside the hospital treating him in Ashkelon and the unrest would likely widen should he die, spurring on Palestinian anger at the attack on the ­Dawabsha family.

Three Israeli settlers are being held under administrative detention in relation to the deadly firebombing.

Yesterday, Israel’s High Court postponed a decision on his legal team’s application that he be released on medical grounds, after it emerged the government had been willing to consider this if Mr Allan agreed to leave the country and enter the West Bank for four years.

The compromise was rejected by Mr Allan’s lawyers and Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, who said it would encourage prisoners to hunger strike.

Additional reporting: agencies