The Palestinian Detainees’ Committee confirmed Tuesday that the cancer-stricken Palestinian detainee, Nasser Abu Hmeid, imprisoned by Israel and serving several life terms, has died at an Israeli medical center.
The Committee said Nasser Mohammad Abu Hmeid, 50, from the Al-Am’ari refugee camp near the central West Bank city of Ramallah, was moved from the Ramla prison clinic to Assaf Harofeh Israeli medical center after suffering serious complications and died at the hospital.
Abu Hmeid’s condition started declining in August of last year, 2021, when he complained of pain in the chest and was diagnosed with lung cancer.
Israeli surgeons removed about 100 centimeters from the area of his tumor and moved him back to Asqalan prison despite his urgent need for chemotherapy and other treatment.
He was left without treatment for some time before the doctors decided he urgently needed chemotherapy and other treatment, but the prison authority kept delaying his transfer to a hospital and denied him the potentially life-saving treatment.
Just recently, Nasser was able to undergo more chemotherapy treatment, but his cancer has already spread and become terminal.
Over the past several months, many human rights and legal groups filed appeals with Israeli courts demanding Nasser’s release to receive treatment at a Palestinian medical center close to his family, but Israel denied all appeals.
Nasser was serving seven life terms and additional fifty years in prison; he was abducted for the first time in the year 1987 and was imprisoned for four months; he was abducted again and sentenced to two and a half years.
He was abducted for the third time in 1990 and was sentenced to life in prison, but was released as part of direct Palestinian-Israeli talks; however, not long after, the army abducted him before he was sentenced to several life terms.
Nasser is also the brother of Abdul-Mon’em Abu Hmeid, who was killed by the Israeli army on May 31, 1994, in addition to Nasr Abu Hmeid, who is serving four life terms in Israeli prisons, Sharif, serving four life terms, Mohammad, serving two life terms and thirty years, and Islam who is serving a life term and eight years in prison.
The Abu Hmeid family home was demolished by Israel five times, and his mother was barred from visiting her imprisoned sons, especially Nasser, for several years; their father also died without seeing his sons.
It is worth mentioning that Nasser was born in 1972 in the Nusseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip before his family moved to the West Bank.
Nasser’s death brings the number of detainees who died in Israeli prisons since Israeli occupied the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem in the year 1967 to 233.
Seventy-four of the deceased detainees died due to medical neglect after Israel denied them the right to adequate and professional medical attention; one of them, Sa’diyya Farajallah, 68, had diabetes and high blood pressure, diabetes, a heart condition, and various chronic illnesses, and was taking various medications before she was taken prisoner and was denied the right to medical treatment.
Israel holds at least 4700 Palestinians captive, including 150 children and 33 women. About 600 detainees are sick, including 24 who suffer from cancers and tumors of various degrees.
