Palestinian detainee Samir Mohammed Yousef Al-Rifai, 53, from the town of Rummanah in the Jenin governorate in the northern occupied West Bank, has died just days after being arrested by Israeli occupation forces; a development that highlights a dangerous escalation in the rate of deaths inside Israeli prisons.
Al-Rifai, a husband and father of five, was arrested from his home on 10 July. He was scheduled to appear today before the Salem military court. According to medical reports previously shared with his family, he suffered from chronic heart problems and was in need of close medical supervision.
Al-Rifai’s death raises the number of known Palestinian detainees who have died in Israeli prisons since the start of the ongoing war of extermination on Gaza to 74. This figure includes only those whose identities have been confirmed, amid a lack of accurate information about the fate of other forcibly disappeared detainees. Since 1967, the total number of Palestinian detainees known by name to have died in Israeli custody has reached 311.
His death adds to a growing list of fatalities inside Israeli detention facilities, amidst an unprecedented deterioration in the health and living conditions of thousands of Palestinians held in widely condemned inhumane conditions. Detainees are suffering from the spread of infectious diseases such as scabies, face systematic denial of medical treatment, deliberate starvation, and both physical and psychological abuse.
It has become increasingly evident that what is happening inside these detention centres is not mere medical negligence, but a deliberate and systematic policy using various means to intimidate or gradually eliminate detainees, particularly those who are ill or elderly.
The abuses taking place in Israeli prisons are yet another aspect of the broader and ongoing war against the Palestinian people. They cannot be separated from the larger context of genocide in Gaza, extrajudicial killings, forced displacement, and arbitrary arrests in the West Bank.
Palestinian prisoners lie at the heart of this confrontation, subjected to treatment that amounts to torture and practices that constitute war crimes under international law.
In light of these realities, the continued deaths of detainees, coupled with a lack of accountability, is a grave indicator that Israeli prisons have effectively become arenas of slow execution, hidden from the world and beyond the reach of meaningful justice.
