The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) has reported that a detainee from Hebron, in the southern part of the occupied West Bank, died at an Israeli medical center after he was denied essential medical treatment and was only moved to Soroka medical center when he neared death.
The PPS said the detainee Ahmad Abu Ali, 48, from Yatta town south of Hebron, was two years away from finishing his twelve-year prison sentence.
It added that the married father of nine had various chronic health conditions, including heart disease and diabetes, but did not receive the needed professional medical treatment and health checkups, an issue that caused further complications.
The PPS held Israel responsible for Ahmad’s death, especially after deliberately neglecting his urgent medical needs, and demanded the Israeli occupation authorities to release detailed and credible information about the health conditions of all ailing detainees and those who were shot before being abducted and imprisoned.
“What happened with Ahmad is part of ongoing Israeli violations against the detainees, especially denying them the right to proper and professional medical treatment; this is an illegal policy that slowly kills the ailing detainees,” the PPS said, “Many Palestinians detainees have died in Israeli prisons, including the few past years, because they didn’t receive the needed medical treatment, and several others were tortured to death.”
Following his death, the Israeli authorities closed all sections and all prisons where Palestinian detainees are held and enforced a strict lockdown, anticipating protests and hunger strikes by the detainees.
The Palestinian detainees in all prisons and detention centers have decided to return all their meals and declared a three-day strike to mourn Ahmad’s death.
Ahmad‘s death brings the number of Palestinian detainees who have died in Israeli prisons since 1967 to 235, including 75 patients. Dozens of former detainees also died from medical conditions that went untreated while imprisoned by Israel for many years.
More than 600 Palestinian detainees suffer from various health conditions, including 24 who have various forms of cancer.
