Palestinian hunger striker gives Israel 24 hrs to resolve case

A Palestinian detainee on a two-month hunger strike emerged from a coma Tuesday but pledged to resume fasting if Israel did not resolve his case within 24 hours, a Palestinian group said.

The detainee, 31-year-old Mohammed Allan, "declared in front of his doctors that if there is not any solution to his case within 24 hours he will ask for all treatment to stop and will stop drinking water," the Palestinian Prisoners Club said in a statement.

Allan, held by Israel without charge since November, went on hunger strike in protest on June 18, taking only water. He fell into a coma on Thursday night.

Doctors had been intravenously giving him water and salts and he was connected to a respirator.

Israel's High Court is on Wednesday to continue hearing a petition by his lawyers calling for his release on medical grounds.

At a hearing on Monday one of the doctors treating Allan said that if he were resume his hunger strike he was likely to go into a fatal decline.

The justice ministry released a statement ahead of Monday's hearing that included an offer to free Allan, a lawyer from the northern West Bank town of Einabus, "if he agrees to go abroad for a period of four years".

His lawyer immediately dismissed the proposal.