PROPOSED legislation to permit force-feeding Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike pitted Israel’s government against the country’s main doctors’ association today.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is asking the Knesset to fast-track the Bill as a hunger strike by dozens of Palestinian detainees entered its sixth week.

Israel’s government is seeking the right for a judge to sanction force-feeding if an inmate’s life is perceived to be in danger.

But there is mounting opposition from Israel’s medical establishment, with the Israel Medical Association urging physicians not to co-operate.

“It goes against the DNA of doctors to force treatment on a patient,” spokeswoman Ziva Miral said. 

“Force-feeding is torture and we can’t have doctors participating in torture.”

She noted that the World Medical Association opposes the practice, saying in 2006 that “forcible feeding is never ethically acceptable.”

Israel’s National Council of Bioethics has also weighed in, saying it opposes the proposed Bill.

And Physicians for Human Rights-Israel contacted the World Medical Association last month, asking that it help to stop the legislation.

The Israeli group reiterated the ethical concerns and added that “the true motivation … is to break the spirit and protests of the hunger strikers.”

Qadoura Fares, an advocate for Palestinian prisoners, said Palestinians would seek international condemnation of Israel if the legislation is passed.

Existing law prohibits the treatment of patients, including prisoners, against their will.

At least 65 of 290 of detainees participating in the hunger strike have been hospitalised since the first group began striking on April 24. 

Many are administrative detainees, held for months or years without charges.

There have been near-daily Palestinian demonstrations backing the prisoners, including in the West Bank yesterday in which dozens of university students threw stones at Israeli soldiers who responded with tear gas.

Families of hunger strikers say they support the strike despite the risks.

“My husband is in Israeli jail without knowing why and when this nightmare is going to end,” Lamees Faraj said of husband Abdel Razeq, who has been in administrative detention for almost eight of the last 20 years.