Palestinian prisoners launch mass hunger strike after prisoner's death

Palestinian prisoners have started a hunger strike in all Israeli prisons in protest against the death of a Palestinian prisoner due to deliberate medical negligence in a hospital in the occupied territories.

The move prompted the Emergency Committee of the Palestine Prisoners' Movement to announce a state of alert in all prisons of the Zionist regime on Friday morning and three days of public mourning following the martyrdom of Ahmad Abu Ali.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) 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 Center on Friday morning.

The 48-year-old Abu Ali, whose family says was suffering from chronic heart health failure, diabetes, and obesity, was admitted to the hospital after his health condition sharply deteriorated.

He was detained in 2012 and sentenced to 12 years in prison.  

The PPS held Israeli authorities fully responsible for Abu Ali’s martyrdom and for the fate of all ill Palestinian prisoners being incarcerated at the regime’s detention centers, stating that his martyrdom represents yet another crime that the occupying Tel Aviv regime is systematically perpetrating against Palestinians.

There are reportedly more than 7,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails. Hundreds of the inmates have been apparently incarcerated under the practice of administrative detention.

MG