Tensions run high in Israeli jails due to medical neglect, harsh punishments

Tension has been running high in Israeli jails on Tuesday after Israel’s systematic medical negligence left a Palestinian sick detainee one-eyed and in the wake of Israel’s arbitrary issue of a series of punitive measures.

Alarm bells have been raised over the exacerbating health status of Palestinian Prisoner Mer’i Hussein Qubha, sentenced to 15 years in prison, after he lost sight in his right eye due to deliberate medical negligence in Israeli prisons.

The prisoner launched, in a press appeal on Tuesday, distress signals over his critical health conditions and spoke out against the apathy maintained by the Israeli prison service (IPS) vis-à-vis his case.

He further appealed to the human rights institutions to step up pressure on the IPS so as to provide him with the urgent medical check-ups before it is too late.

Prisoner Hussein has yet to wait for four more years in Israeli jails to restore his freedom and seek a vision rehabilitation of his own, after he has been locked-up for 11 years behind Israeli bars.

Meanwhile, tension has been running high in the Ofer jail as a new chain of collective punitive measures has been issued by the Israeli prison authorities.

According to a statement released by the prisoners’ and ex-prisoners committee on Tuesday, the sanctions include the delay of the arrival of the canteen funds, bad food and bread quality, systematic medical negligence, and abrupt overnight searches.

The statement spoke out against Israel’s violation of prisoners’ rights to family visits as a psycho-physical torture tactic aiming at dampening the detainees’ spirits. At least 45 visit permits have been cancelled by the IPS last month.

The most serious of all measures is to have banned Palestinians’ access to pro-Palestine newspapers and TV channels as part of a tacit brainwash-tactic aiming at keeping them at bay from the current political and international updates.

The prisoners’ committee warned of the remarkable deterioration in prisoner Ibrahim Abdullah Mustafa’s health status. Ibrahim, 30, is sentenced to 15 years in Ashkelon prison and has been diagnosed with kidney and cardio-vascular diseases, along with high cholesterol, blood pressure, and neurological diseases, forcing the sick prisoner to consume 38 pills per day.

The report further raised alarm bells over the deadly diseases and anti-hygienic health circumstances wrought on scores of Ashkelon prisoners.

The state of affairs has been no less tense in the Israeli Etzion jail, to which at least 53 Palestinian captives, mostly from the southern West Bank city of al-Khalil, have been dragged.

Lawyer of the Palestinian Prisoner Society, Jaqueline Frarja, quoted the Etzion detainees as strongly condemning the mistreatment and deprivation they have been made to endure in the detention center amid an unprecedented upsurge in the arbitrary mass-abduction campaigns carried out by the Israeli occupation troops on a daily basis.

Tainted smells, dirty clothes, rotten food, heavy beating, and deliberate medical neglect are instances of IPS measures, among many other castigatory measures, wrought on Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

The Palestinian captives held in Israeli prisons have appealed to human rights groups, nationwide and overseas, to immediately step in and pressure the Israeli occupation authorities to set them free before it is too late.