MK Taleb Abu-Arar (Joint List) issued a thinly veiled threat at Israeli doctors who force-feed terrorist prisoners on hunger strike in a debate at the Knesset's State Control Committee Monday.
Abu Arar said that he is “raising the matter of the dangers that the doctors will be exposed to – not just ethical ones... I am talking about endangering the lives of doctors, too. The government will have to protect them, bring heavy security and guard each one of them. We all know this law is anti-constitutional and anti-democratic.”
MK Oren Hazan (Likud) and MK Yinon Magal (Jewish Home) interrupted Abu Arar in protest of the veiled threat to doctors. He stated that he was not threatening the doctors but presenting the dangers they will be facing.
The chair of the session, MK Karin Elharar (Yesh Atid) did not understand Abu Arar's words as threats, however. Magal and Hazan insisted that he was, indeed, threatening, and demanded that she prevent him from doing so. Magal said that perhaps she had not been listening properly to what Abu Arar said.
Elharar finally asked Abu Arar: “MK Abu Arar, did you threaten doctors?”
Abu Arar replied: “No.”
As far as Elharar was concerned, that was that and Abu Arar was free to continue.
Arab and leftist MKs made it difficult for nationalist MKs to speak at all in Monday's debate, as can be seen in this interchange. A debate on Jewish Temple Mount rights last week was disrupted by Arabs and cut short.
Last Sunday, the government authorized for legislation a bill that would allow prison officials to force-feed security prisoners who go on a hunger strike. The approval of the bill by the government means that it can now be submitted to the Ministerial Committee for Legislation for approval, and prepared for its first Knesset reading.
The bill's sponsor, Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan, said that heintended to ensure that the law was enacted “with the greatest speed. Security prisoners who are trying to use a hunger strike in order to carry out a new kind of suicide terror attack will no longer be allowed to threaten Israel.”