The Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Committee called on the international community human rights, legal, and humanitarian institutions to urgently intervene and put pressure on the Israeli government to release sick prisoners, especially cancer patients, and save their lives.

The commission on Monday stated in a statement that reached Safa that about 700 sick prisoners are in the Israeli prisons, including 300 prisoners suffer from chronic diseases and more than 12 prisoners suffer from cancer to varying degrees.

It was recently announced that the prisoner Hussein Masalma, 37, from Bethlehem, was diagnosed with leukemia which increases the number of prisoners with cancer in the Israeli prisons.

The Committee expressed its concern about the deterioration in the health condition of the prisoner Masalma, who has been detained since 2002 and was sentenced to 20 years in prison, especially since the prisoner was suffering in the previous period from severe pain in the abdomen, but the prison administration did not care about his condition and prolonged his transfer to the hospital to diagnose his condition and receive treatment.

Prisoner Masalma is currently in the Israeli Soroka Medical Center and he was transferred a few days ago to receive the first chemotherapy session.

It is confirmed that the Israeli prisons administration is keen on, medically, violating diseased prisoners in various detention centers, deliberately targeting them by neglecting their health conditions, and preventing them from the effective treatment.

“With the spread of Coronavirus and the increase in the number of infections among the prisoners, there has become clear concern about the fate of sick prisoners with weakened immunity like the cases of cancer patients, especially since the Israeli prison administration is holding them in sections that lack the lowest health and safety conditions and are considered an incubator environment for the spread of the virus,” the committee added.