The Committee of Palestinian Prisoners and Former Prisoners said Tuesday that the administrations of Israeli jails deliberately assault wounded and sick Palestinian prisoners through medical negligence and deprivation of treatment to make them die.
The committee stated in a statement issued on Tuesday that through prisoners’ witnesses and close monitor of the health condition along several years, it turned out that the medical care provided for sick prisoners is the worst. It is formal and nearly never provided.
The committee stressed that prisoners are detained in very bad conditions. Their cells are damp and badly ventilated. It is also overcrowded and unsanitary, and infested with insects and rodent.
The number of Palestinian martyrs, who died in Israeli jails due to medical negligence, has reached 64 prisoners since 1967.
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| Arab prisoners in Israeli prison |
Let's assume that the average Palestinian prisoner is male and 25 years old.
In the US, the odds of dying for that person in any given year is 0.13%. Let's assume that it is roughly the same for Palestinians.
Let's further assume an average of 6000 prisoners incarcerated at any given moment since 1967.
That means that if they were outside prison, about 8 would be expected to die any year.
I will vastly overestimate the number of the Palestinians that die from car accidents or conflict (not likely in prison) to be half of that total, or 4 per year. The actual number is far lower; most Palestinian deaths are from non-communicable diseases. But let's vastly underestimate the number of non-accidental deaths to be half this total.
Which means that we would expect 4 prisoners to die of natural causes every year if they are all young and otherwise healthy.
We would expect the total number of prisoner deaths over 52 years to be above 210 .
If only 64 have died in that time period, then Arab prisoners must be receiving exceptional medical care compared to Palestinians who are not in prison.
The Committee for Prisoners has proven that Israel takes very good medical care of its Arab prisoners.