JERUSALEM — A single Palestinian prisoner’s determination to starve himself to death unless he is freed is flummoxing Israel’s legal, medical, political and security systems.

The prisoner, Mohammad Allan, a 31-year-old lawyer and Islamic Jihad member who has not eaten since June 16, regained consciousness on Tuesday, after spending four days on a ventilator and receiving fluids, salts and potassium intravenously. On Wednesday, Israel’s Supreme Court will consider his demand for immediate release from administrative detention, the controversial tactic in which more than 300 Palestinians and a handful of Israelis are being held without charge or trial.

The case has received extraordinary attention because it unfolded as Israel narrowly passed a law last month allowing the force-feeding of hunger strikers. That spawned outrage by its own medical association, whose doctors refuse to participate in the law’s application, and international human-rights groups that have also condemned the practice at Guantánamo Bay and in other Western nations.

The law itself is fraught with complexity that makes it difficult to apply and, according to several experts on bioethics, was unnecessary because Israel already allows the treatment of competent patients against their will.