By Palestine Chronicle Staff  

Cancer-Stricken Palestinian prisoner Walid Daqqa died on Sunday after 38 years of detention in an Israeli prison.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Affairs Commision and the Prisoners’ Club announced in a brief statement that Daqqa died at the Assaf Harofeh Hospital as a result of the policy of deliberate medical negligence and slow killing carried out by Israeli occupation authorities. 

Daqqa’s health has reportedly deteriorated since March of last year, as a result of a severe pneumonia and acute kidney failure.

The 62-year-old Palestinian prisoner was arrested in 1986 and sentenced to 37 years in prison, which he completed in March 2023. 

Gaza Rallies for Cancer-Stricken Palestinian Prisoner, Walid Daqqa

Israeli authorities, however, extended his sentence by two years in 2017 over charges of smuggling a mobile phone into prison.

Daqqa is a Palestinian writer, activist, and political prisoner from Baqa Al-Gharbiya, a Palestinian town in today’s Israel.

Palestinian human rights organizations have repeatedly accused Israel of medical negligence, which led to the worsening of Daqqa’s health condition.

Over 9,100 Palestinian prisoners are currently detained in Israeli prisons, and their conditions have worsened since the beginning of a devastating war and genocide on the Gaza Strip starting on October 7.

Starved

In a statement issued on March 11, a Palestinian human rights organization has accused Israel of starving more than 9,100 Palestinian detainees in its prisons, Anadolu news agency reported.

“Israeli prison authorities continue to starve more than 9,100 detainees, including women, children and sick,” the Palestinian Prisoner Society said in a statement.

“Israel is also restricting their freedom to practice their religious rituals,” it added.

Palestinian Prisoners Subjected to ‘Starvation, Torture, Abuse’ – NGO

Gaza Genocide

Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza. 

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 33,175 Palestinians have been killed, and 75,886 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.

Moreover, at least 7,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip. 

Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.

Israel Responsible for Neglect, Death of Detainees – Palestinian Prisoners Society

The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.

Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire.’

(PC, AJA)