Ruling normalises Israeli violence against hunger striking prisoners

In another example of how Israel remains in contempt of human rights, morality and international law, the Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that force-feeding hunger striking Palestinian prisoners is “constitutional”.

Since the initial massacres committed by Zionist paramilitary groups, the colonial entity in Palestine has refined its methods and normalised violence, to the extent that any violations committed by Israel are now perceived as an unfortunate consequence and nothing else.

Since 2014, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu first publicised the intent to force-feed Palestinian prisoners embarking on hunger strikes as a form of protest, the indignity and contravention of medical law caused much consternation, albeit in intermittent spasms. The Israeli Medical Association (IMA) had countered the passing of the bill in 2015 by stating that doctors would be instructed to refuse force-feeding orders as “this is a case in which medical ethics unequivocally trump the law.”

Following several legal petitions filed by the IMA and human rights groups last year, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled out the legitimate opposition by stating, according to Ma’an news agency, that “a hunger striker is not an ordinary person but a person who knowingly and willingly places himself in a dangerous situation as a protest or a means of attaining a personal or public goal.” As a consequence, hunger strikes have “implications that go beyond the personal matter of the hunger striker.”

Such a ruling is, of course, timely, when Israel is seeking to curb the influence which Palestinian hunger strikers have had upon Palestinian resistance, in particular since mass hunger strikes in Israeli jails have become the means through which the injustice of administrative detention and its ambiguity under international law are exposed.

Furthermore, the mass hunger strikes have made an important link to Palestinian history and memory, when organised resistance inside Israeli jails provided the foundations for anti-colonial struggle. As long as Palestinian resistance remains sporadic, Israel can remain safe in its knowledge that any efforts to regain rights will be short-lived.

Indeed the extent to which Israel has enforced the fragmentation of Palestine across a vast spectrum ranging from people and territory to experience and memory has contributed to the prevailing attitude embodied by the international community of purportedly addressing specific violations rather than legitimising the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle. Within Palestine, the struggle has also become fragmented. Hunger striking Palestinian prisoners have shifted away from the prevailing framework and carved out a niche that is reverberating in terms of collective resistance, which has resulted in increased efforts by Israel to destroy the acquired consistency.

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