by Our Foreign Desk

ISRAEL’S parliament passed a law yesterday allowing the force-feeding of prisoners on hunger strike, a practice widely viewed as torture.

The 120-seat Knesset voted by 46 to 40 in favour of the law, which allows judges to sanction the force-feeding or administration of medical treatment if there is a threat to the inmate’s life, even if the prisoner refuses.

Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan sought to accuse the victims of Israeli apartheid of aggression against the zionist state.

“The hunger strikes of the terrorists in jail have turned into a tool they use to try to pressure and threaten the state of Israel and to cause it to release terrorists,” he said. “The new law allows us to prevent a threat to the prisoners’ lives and to prevent them from putting pressure on the state.”

Likud Knesset member David Amsalem claimed the Act “creates the right balance between the state’s interest to protect the prisoner’s life and his rights and sovereignty over his body.”

Under the law, judges would have to consult a doctor before ordering a prisoner to be force-fed.

But the Israeli Medical Association, which has urged physicians not to co-operate, plans to challenge the law in the Supreme Court. Chairman Leonid Eidelman said: “Israeli doctors will continue to act according to medical ethical norms that completely prohibit doctors from participating in torture, and force-feeding amounts to torture.”

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel called the law “shameful,” saying “it pushes the medical community to severely violate medical ethics for political gains.”

Palestinian Prisoners Society chairman Qadura Fares called the law “ugly” and said it violated the prisoners’ right to conduct a hunger strike.

Several mass and individual hunger strikes this year have forced concessions from the Israeli state.

Earlier this month Islamic Jihad spokesman Khader Adnan (pictured) was released from a year in prison without trial this month after a 55-day hunger strike.

And some 2,000 prisoners ended a four-week hunger strike in May after they won better prison conditions and more visiting rights.

In June, 63 Palestinian prisoners ended a two-month strike over such “administrative” detention without charge in return for minor concessions.