Israel Deliberately Neglecting Medical Condition of Palestinian Prisoners

Ramallah,. MINA – Palestinian Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs Commission said on Thursday, Israeli prison authorities are turning a blind eye to the deteriorating health condition of Palestinian prisoner Imad Hasan Rabaiaa (45).

Rabaiaa has been suffering from a skin disease that causes him severe itching, redness, and the appearance of pimples all over his body. Israeli occupation authorities have so far failed to provide him with adequate medical care or refer him to hospit
“This deliberate negligence of prisoner Rabaaia’s health condition is one of multiple forms of torture and abuse against the 700 Palestinian sick prisoners in the Israeli prisons,” said the Commission.

Rabaiaa has been in prison since 2002, and is serving a jail sentence of 23 years for his activism in the resistance of the Israeli occupation.

Meanwhile, two Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails have been on hunger strike for four days and 22 days respectively in protest of their unfair detention without charge or trial, today said the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS).

Sa’ed Abu Ebeid, 41, a resident of Jenin city in the occupied West Bank, was detained by the Israeli occupation army on November 30, 2020, and was sentenced to four and a half months in prison.

He was supposed to be released at the end of his prison sentence, but was surprised by an Israeli court order placing him in administrative detention starting from the day of his expected release, pushing him to start a hunger strike four days ago.

He is a former prisoner in Israeli jails, and has served a total of 12 years in intermittent detention sentences for resisting the Israeli occupation of his homeland.

In the meantime, Palestinian administrative detainee Emad Ibrahim Sawarkeh, from the occupied West Bank city of Jericho, is also on his 22nd day of hunger strike against detention without charge or trial.

Israel’s widely condemned practice of administrative detention that allows the detention of Palestinians without charge or trial for renewable intervals ranging between three and six months based on undisclosed evidence that even a detainee’s lawyer is barred from viewing.

Amnesty International has described Israel’s use of administrative detention as a “bankrupt tactic” and has long called on Israel to bring its use to an end.

Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes as a way to protest their illegal administrative detention and to demand an end to this policy, which violates international law. (T/RE1)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)