Israeli court orders Palestinian hunger striker to stay in hospital

Israel's Supreme Court on Tuesday said a Palestinian hunger striker must stay in the northern Israeli hospital where he is being held, after a failed attempt to break a stalemate.

"The court refused the request of Mohammed al-Qiq and will leave him in the hospital in Afula," his lawyer Jawad Boulos said in a statement.

The 33-year-old journalist is reported to be close to death 84 days after starting a hunger strike in protest against his internment without trial under Israel's administrative detention laws.

He has occasionally taken minerals and vitamins, but mainly ingests only tap water, doctors who have visited him say.

The court officially suspended the internment order against Qiq on 4 February, but refused his demand for transfer to a hospital in the West Bank city of Ramallah, under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction.

On Monday, it offered a compromise whereby he would be moved to the Palestinian-run Makassed hospital in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem.

Afou Agbaria, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, former parliamentarian and physician who visited Qiq in Afula, said he turned down the proposal.

"He refuses to be cared for in Makassed because it is located under Israeli sovereignty and he says he will not be retained in custody," he told AFP. 

"He said, 'It's death or freedom, and if Israeli security has something against me, it must bring me to justice, rather than to hold me under administrative detention without trial or charge'."

Qiq, a father of two and a correspondent for Saudi Arabia's Almajd TV network, was arrested at his home in Ramallah on 21 November.

He has been refusing food since 25 November in protest against the "torture and ill treatment that he was subjected to during interrogation," according to Addameer, a Palestinian human rights organisation.

Fayhaa Shalash, Qiq’s wife, told Middle East Eye back in January that when her husband was arrested, the Israeli army confiscated some of his belongings before handcuffing and blindfolding him.

“Ever since, I wasn’t able to see him and Israel is still denying me a permit to visit him at Afula hospital,” Shalash said, and appealed to Palestinians within Israel to hold a sit-in outside the Supreme Court and the hospital.

The United Nations has expressed concern about his fate, with the International Committee of the Red Cross describing his condition as critical.

Israel's Shin Bet domestic security service says Qiq was detained for "terror activity" on behalf of the Islamist political party Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.

Israel's controversial administrative detention law allows the state to hold suspects without charge or trial for periods of six months renewable indefinitely.