Israel re-arrests former Palestinian hunger striker

Israeli forces have re-arrested Mohammed Allan, a prominent Palestinian prisoner who had staged a hunger strike in Israeli jail to protest against his detention without trial.

Media reports said on Thursday that Allan was detained overnight in the occupied northern West Bank.

Israeli domestic spy agency Shin Bet confirmed that the 32-year-old resident of Einabus was detained for questioning “as part of the struggle against the phenomenon of Palestinian incitement in media and social media, which leads to severe attacks in Israel.”

Allan, who had been released from Israeli prison after a year without trial, was arrested for calling for resistance to the “Zionist enemy”, it said.

In November 2015, Allan was released from a year in jail under an Israeli measure known as administrative detention, which allows Israeli courts to order suspects to be detained indefinitely, subject to renewal every six months, without charge or trial.

In June that year, he began a two-month hunger strike which twice left him in coma and also triggered protests across the occupied territories.

Allan, who is an alleged member of the Palestinian resistance movement Islamic Jihad and a lawyer by training, had been on hunger strike for 65 days to protest Israel’s practice of administrative detention.

He ended his hunger strike on August 20 after an Israeli court suspended his detention.