THE Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) has just announced in a statement that Ahmed Badr Abdullah Abu Ali, a resident of Yatta city in the south of the occupied West Bank city of al-Khalil, died at Soroka Medical Centre on Friday morning.
The 48-year-old Abu Ali, whose family says was suffering from chronic heart failure, diabetes and obesity, was admitted to hospital after his health condition sharply deteriorated. He was detained by Israel in 2012, and sentenced to 12 years in prison.
The PPS holds the Israeli government fully responsible for Abu Ali’s death, and for the fate of all ill Palestinian prisoners being incarcerated at the regime’s detention centres.
It has vehemently denounced the Israel Prison Service over its policy of deliberate medical negligence, emphasising that the practice has been behind the death of many Palestinian prisoners over the past few years.
Currently 120 Palestinian inmates in an Israeli jail continue their open-ended hunger strike for the second consecutive day in protest against the regime’s repressive measures. The Palestinian Hamas resistance movement has also mourned Abu Ali’s death, lamenting it as a blatant violation of all international principles and humanitarian rules.
Hamas spokesman, Abdel Latif al-Qanou, said in a statement that his loss brings the number of Palestinian prisoners who have died in Israeli custody since 1967 to 235, stressing that the tragic event clearly points to the criminal and brutal mistreatment of the inmates.
Qanou also called on international human rights organisations and world bodies to break their silence and intervene in order to save the lives of Palestinian prisoners who are at imminent risk of death due to the policy of deliberate medical negligence.
Israel has just released the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner Karim after spending almost 40 years in the regime’s jails. There are reportedly more than 7,000 Palestinians held at Israeli jails. Hundreds of the inmates have been permanently incarcerated under the practice of administrative detention.
According to the latest figures from Addameer, the Palestinian Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, there are currently 4,700 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons and detention centres, including 150 children and 34 females.
This number includes 835 Palestinians placed under ‘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.
Mass arrest of Palestinians is nothing new. According to a 2017 report by Addameer, over the past 50 years, more than 800,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned or detained by Israel, this figure is now believed to be closer to 1 million.
This means that about 40% of Palestinian men and boys living under military occupation have been deprived of their freedom. Almost every Palestinian family has suffered the imprisonment of a loved one.
While human rights organisations take up the cause of the Palestinian political prisoners, the most powerful workers organisation in the UK, the TUC, remains shamefully silent on the issue.
They have not carried out one decisive action to support the Palestinians. The nearest they came to it was on May 22, in 2021, after yet another Israeli massacre of Palestinians touched off a massive 250,000 strong demonstration in London.
National Education Union General Secretary Kevin Courtney told the huge crowd: ‘I am standing here in front of the Trade Unionists for Palestine banner, bearing the names of 15 major unions, the four largest unions in the country – Unite, Unison, GMB, NEU, along with ASLEF, RMT, TSSA, PCS, CWU, UCU, FBU, POA, Equity, the Bakers Union and the United World Transport Union.
‘Trade unionists are here today in solidarity with the general strike in Palestine last week and we need to take similar action for Palestine here.’
15 TUC leaders on a mass demonstration against Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian people pledged that they would call a general strike to ban all Israeli goods and services from the UK and to bring the Israeli state to its knees.
Their current silence is deafening and shameful! They must now call the general strike in support of the Palestinian people and to boycott the state of Israel. There is not a moment to lose!
