Palestinian Prisoner Walid Daqqa dies after 38 years in Israeli jails

By Awad Rjoub and Said Amori

RAMALLAH, Palestine (AA) –The Palestinian prisoner Walid Daqqa, 62, died on Sunday, after 38 years in Israeli jails, due to cancer, Palestinian rights groups reported.

"The leader and prisoner Walid Daqqa, suffering from cancer, was martyred at Assaf Harofeh Hospital (near Tel Aviv)," the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners Society said in a joint statement.

Deqqa's death was attributed to "the deliberate medical negligence policy pursued by the occupation prisons administration against sick prisoners."

The statement said Deqqa hails from Baqa al-Gharbiyye, a town located in Israel on the border with the occupied West Bank, annd has been detained since 1986.

Earlier on Sunday, the newspaper Israel Today reported Daqqa's death in the hospital due to a rare form of cancer.

It added that he has been imprisoned since 1986, on charges of kidnapping and killing an Israeli soldier in 1984, and he is one of the oldest Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Israel has detained at least 9,100 Palestinian prisoners, whose conditions have worsened since the war in the Gaza Strip began on Oct. 7 last year, according to Palestinian organizations concerned with prisoners.​​​​​​​

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack in early October by the Palestinian group, Hamas, killed less than 1,200 people.

Nearly 33,200 Palestinians have since been killed and almost 75,900 injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities. Israel has also imposed a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which last week asked it to do more to prevent famine in Gaza.

*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala