AL-QUDS (Dispatches) – Palestinian factions called for a general strike in the occupied West Bank and urged Palestinians to confront Zionist troops on Tuesday after a Palestinian prisoner who was suffering from cancer and had lately lapsed into a deep coma, has died because of medical complications caused by deliberate medical negligence in the occupying regime’s detention.
Nasser Abu Hamid, 50, a former leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, was sentenced to seven life sentences in 2002 for alleged involvement in the deaths of seven Zionists during the second Palestinian Intifada, or uprising against the regime’s occupation in the early 2000s.
Palestinian officials had called for his release as his health deteriorated in recent months.
Abu Hamid’s death came as one of the deadliest years in Zionist-Palestinian fighting in recent decades draws to a close, with the prospects of negotiating a solution and ending the regime’s open-ended military rule over the Palestinians increasingly remote.
The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) and the Palestinian Commission of Detainees’ and Ex-Detainees’ Affairs said in a joint statement that Abu Hamid was pronounced dead on Tuesday morning at the regime’s Shamir Medical Center, formerly known as Assaf Harofeh Medical Center and located 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) southeast of Tel Aviv.
They said Abu Hamid was transferred from the Ramla Prison Hospital to the medical center on Monday afternoon after his health condition severely deteriorated.
Abu Hamid had been battling death for several months in Ramla Prison Hospital. His health had been deteriorating amid a wide spread of cancerous cells throughout his body, with complete damage to his left lung.
He hailed from the al-Amari refugee camp in the occupied central West Bank city of Ramallah.
Abu Hamid was diagnosed with lung cancer in August 2021 after Zionist regime authorities delayed the provision of medical examinations and treatment, according to prisoner groups.
His family had appealed to all concerned international bodies to take an urgent and effective action to save the life of their son.
The Gaza-based Hamas resistance movement mourned the death of the cancer-stricken Palestinian prisoner.
Hazem Qassem, a spokesman for the group, said in a statement on Tuesday that Abu Hamid fought the occupation until his last breath, and represented the entire Palestinian nation.
He denounced the Palestinian inmate’s death as a major crime committed by the occupying regime against Palestinian prisoners and Palestinians in general, stressing that the misdeed must be met with a mass uprising aimed at forcing Zionists to abandon their criminal policy of medical negligence.
There are reportedly more than 7,000 Palestinians incarcerated in the regime’s jails. Human rights organizations say the regime violates all the rights and freedoms granted to prisoners by the Fourth Geneva Convention.