Israel has rejected appeals to release a Palestinian prisoner on a life-endangering long-term hunger strike to the West Bank, AFP quoted Palestinian Prisoner Affairs Minister Issa Qaraqea as saying Saturday.

Israel has rejected appeals to release a Palestinian prisoner on a life-endangering long-term hunger strike to the West Bank, AFP quoted Palestinian Prisoner Affairs Minister Issa Qaraqea as saying Saturday.

Qaraqea said that Israeli officials told him on Saturday that Samer Issawi, who has intermittently refused food for more than eight months, "is in critical condition and might die at any moment."

Issawi, 33, was first arrested in 2002 and sentenced to 26 years for militant activity in the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

He was released by Israel under a prisoner swap in October 2011, but rearrested last July.

Qaraqea said that the Palestinians had requested that he be released temporarily to the West Bank.

"We proposed that they release him to Ramallah for a while and they refused," he said, adding that "we agreed to send him to Europe for a few months to receive medical treatment and then come back again but they refused."