The Israeli high court's decision to suspend the administrative detention order against Mohammed Allan, the Palestinian who maintained a hunger strike for more than two months in protest against his imprisonment without charge or trial, may have come too late. Allan has suffered brain damage after 65 days without food and his condition might be irreversible. Allan's detention has also done nothing to end Israel's practice of holding suspects without charge, or its new law that permits the force-feeding of hunger strikers. Allan has been in detention since November last year, and ended his strike after the court's suspension of the detention order. He had refused to take anything but water during his strike, insisting on either freedom or death. The Israeli system allows a military court to order suspects to be detained indefinitely, subject to renewal every six months by the court, without charge or trial. The Israelis like to call this incarceration “administrative detention” because it sounds more official, more proper. Israel defends the practice as being a necessary tool to stop attacks by Palestinians and argues that revealing the charges would expose intelligence networks and put lives in danger. Aside from putting Allan's life in danger, the measure violates due process. What does classified information mean? Is it classified because there are no charges? There is nothing called secret evidence. This is not a game of hide and seek. Either there is proof of wrongdoing that the victim and his family are told of or there is nothing of the sort and as such he or she should be released immediately. Allan was accused of being a member of Islamic Jihad but no evidence was ever made available. And if there is any evidence, it was being kept secret. Any seven-year-old in a playground would tell you that if the so-called evidence is secret, that can only mean that there is no such evidence. Israel claims that to release Allan would be a prize for the hunger strike he initiated and may lead to mass hunger strikes among the security detainees after they discover a new tool with which to extort Israel. Thus, they call the hunger strike tactic the new type of suicide terror attack. In fact, hunger striking is just the opposite. A hunger strike is a method of non-violent protest in which participants fast as an act of political protest. The strikers want to achieve a specific goal, in this case their freedom. In the bigger picture, Palestinian hunger strikers seek an end to the occupation, a 180-degree sea change. What else can Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails - accused of nothing except being Palestinian - do to protest their situation and that of their country? The United Nations is criticizing Israel's practice of administrative detention and has called for all detainees to be promptly charged or released. The UN also said this week that Israel's decisions to force-feed prisoners on hunger strike threatened to worsen an “already precarious human rights situation”. Force-feeding is an unethical violation of patient autonomy and is very close to being torture. The US has admitted to force-feeding detainees at its navy base in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, while Britain force-fed some Irish Republican Army prisoners on hunger strikes. It seems that if force-feeding is good enough for democratic countries like the US and Britain, then it must be good enough for Israel. Palestinian resistance now has a new face - that of Mohammed Allan. He had to suffer possible permanent brain damage in order for Israel to finally release him. It should never have gone that far. Without charge or trial Allan should never have been jailed in the first place.
