A 62-year-old cancer-stricken Palestinian prisoner Walid Daqqah has died in Israel’s Shamir Medical Center, formerly Assaf Harofeh Medical Center, in southeast of Tel Aviv.
This came after he spent 38 years in prison in light of the policy of deliberate medical negligence and slowly killing pursued by the Israeli prison administration against ill prisoners.
In a joint statement on Sunday, April 7, the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS), said, Daqqah’s health condition dramatically deteriorated since March 2023 after he was taken to hospital, suffering from severe pneumonia and acute kidney failure.
In 2022, Daqqah diagnosed with myelofibrosis – a rare form of bone marrow cancer.
In November 2023, the Israeli Supreme Court refused to release Daqqah despite the deterioration of his health condition and instead set his release date for 2025.
Israel’s far-right Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, stated that Israel is not mourning the death of Daqqah, who he referred to as a “terrorist.”
Taking to X, Ben!-Gvir said that Daqqah’s life had ended naturally and that it was not a part of the “death penalty for terrorists” as it was “supposed to” be.
Who is Walid Daqqah?
Walid Daqqah was diagnosed with spinal cancer in December 2022, along with other serious ailments, which left him Paralyzed.
Daqqah hails from the Palestinian village of Baqa al-Gharbiya inside Israel and is one of the most prominent thinkers and writers in the Palestinian prisoner movement. He has a master’s degree in political science and wrote several books while in prison.
He was imprisoned by Israel in 1986 for his involvement in the killing of an Israeli soldier and was sentenced to 37 years in prison, which he completed in March 2023, but Israeli authorities extended his sentence by two years in 2018 on charges of trying to help prisoners contact their families.
In 1999, he also got married while in prison. Along with his wife, Sana Salameh, he welcomed a daughter, Milad, in 2020, after his sperm was smuggled out of prison, Palestinian Information Center (PIC) reported.
He is considered one of the 26 veteran prisoners detained before the signing of the Oslo Accords, the oldest of whom are Karim Younis and Maher Younis, as Israel has refused over the past decades to release them.
Palestinian human rights organizations report that Israel is holding at least 9,100 Palestinian prisoners, and their conditions have worsened since the start of its aggression against the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023.
The six-month Israeli war on Gaza has resulted in over 33,000 deaths, injuries, and famine, primarily affecting children and women, according to Palestinian and UN data.
Israel continues the war despite the Security Council’s ceasefire resolution and its first appearance before the International Court of Justice on charges of genocide.
