Debating Forced Medical Feeding: a Critical Examination of Israeli Responses to Hunger Strikes

Noam Zohar (Bar Ilan University)

In this talk, I will critically examine Israeli institutional responses to hunger strikes (mainly by Palestinian prisoners). A crucial part of the background is the unique clause 15 of Israel's Patient’s Rights Act of 1996, which allows forced, life-saving treatment in the expectation of retroactive consent. Recently, the government initiated legislation aimed to mandate forced feeding for reasons that include not only concern for the hunger striker's life, but also concern for state security. The National Bioethics Council unanimously opposed this expansion of grounds for forced treatment, though a minority within the Council endorsed placing hunger strikers in a separate category from other patients. The ethical and political values expressed in this debate, as well as the background notion of retroactive consent, call for philosophical scrutiny.