RAMALLAH, Palestine/ISTANBUL

A Palestinian detainee at the Ramon Prison in southern Israel died due to deteriorating health, prisoners affairs groups said on Wednesday.

Citing the Palestinian Civil Affairs Authority, which liaises with Israeli authorities, the Commission of Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners Society, in a joint statement, identified the detainee as Ahmed Khdeirat, 22.

The statement said Khdeirat, from the town of ad-Dhahiriya in Hebron, southern West Bank, died at Israel’s Soroka Medical Center.

In August, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society had warned of a “serious deterioration” in Khdeirat’s health. He was held under administrative detention since May 2024.

The group had said that “Khdeirat, detained in Israel’s Negev prison, is facing a severe decline in his health due to chronic diabetes and a skin disease (scabies),” adding that his weight had dropped to 40 kilograms.

Administrative detention is an Israeli military order allowing imprisonment without charge or trial for renewable periods of up to six months, based on alleged security grounds.

The Israeli intelligence service presents a so-called “secret file” to the court that neither the detainee nor their lawyer is allowed to see.

Khdeirat’s case is one among thousands of ill Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, where authorities are accused of deliberately imposing policies and measures aimed at killing the inmates.

Resistance group Hamas mourned the death of Khdeirat, saying it raised the death toll of Palestinian prisoners since October 2023 to 78, demanding urgent international action to hold Israel accountable for its crimes against the detainees.

On Tuesday, a report issued by prisoners’ organizations, including the Palestinian Prisoners Society, the Detainees Commission, and Al-Dameer Foundation, said 77 Palestinian prisoners had died since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza two years ago.

The report added that among them were 46 prisoners from the Gaza Strip, besides dozens who were executed in the field.

It also noted that during this period the Israeli army arrested more than 20,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem — among them 1,600 children and about 595 women.

Tensions have escalated in the West Bank since the start of the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza, where more than 67,000 people have been killed.

According to official Palestinian figures, at least 1,049 Palestinians have been killed and around 10,300 injured in the West Bank since October 2023.

Israel has occupied Palestinian territories, as well as land in Syria and Lebanon, for decades and continues to reject withdrawal and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, based on pre-1967 borders.