Israeli court sentences Palestinian cancer patient to 13 months in prison

An Israeli court has handed down a jail term of 13 months to a young Palestinian cancer patient as prison authorities prevent Palestinian prisoners in poor health from receiving appropriate medical care and refusing to allow them to undergo urgent surgeries.

On Sunday, the Salem military base in the northern flank of the occupied West Bank issued the verdict against 22-year-old Ali Mahmoud Hanoun, who suffers from leukemia, the Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) reported.

The court also ordered Hanoun, a resident of the northwestern West Bank city of Qalqilya, to pay a fine of 3,000 shekels ($812).

Israeli military forces detained the cancer patient during an operation in March.

Israeli authorities claim that medical tests were performed on Hanoun following his detention, and the results showed that he no longer suffers from leukemia.

On August 10, the father of a Palestinian inmate accused the Israel Prison Service, commonly known in occupied territories by its acronym Shabas, of deliberately neglecting his son’s deteriorating medical situation and delaying the approval of an operation, the Palestinian Information Center reported.

Azmi Annafaa, a local resident of the northern occupied West Bank city of Jenin, is suffering from a bullet injury in his jaw, and urgently needs an operation before his face is disfigured.

He sustained the injury in 2015, when Israeli soldiers sprayed his car with bullets near Za’atara checkpoint south of Nablus, located approximately 49 kilometers (30 miles) north of Jerusalem al-Quds.

He was accused at the time of intentionally ramming his car into a group of Israeli soldiers at the checkpoint. An Israeli military court later sentenced him to 20 years in jail.

Meanwhile, the PPS says Israel has issued 33 orders for the so-called administrative detention against Palestinians.

The society confirmed that 23 out of the 33 administrative detention orders are renewed orders, while the remaining 10 detainees received detention orders for the first time or were re-detained after being released.

PPS added that the orders range from three to six months of prison.

More than 7,000 Palestinian prisoners are currently held in some 17 Israeli jails, dozens of whom are serving multiple life sentences.

Over 500 detainees are under the so-called administrative detention, which is a sort of imprisonment without trial or charge that allows Israel to incarcerate Palestinians for up to six months, extendable an infinite number of times.

Some prisoners have been held in administrative detention for up to 11 years without any charges brought against them.

Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes in an attempt to express their outrage at the detentions.

According to the Palestinian Information Center, at least 8,000 Palestinian minors have been arrested and prosecuted in Israeli military courts since 2000.

It is estimated that between 500 and 700 Palestinian minors, some as young as 12 years old, are arrested and brought to trial in Israeli courts. The most common charge is stone-throwing.

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