🔴 Israeli Prison Forces Fire Rubber-Coated Bullets at Sick Palestinian Political Prisoners

Palestinian Prisoner’s Society

October 20, 2025

Ramallah, occupied Palestine – The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) confirmed that detainee Azmi Nader Abu Hlayel (31 years old) from Dura in Hebron, who has been detained in Ofer Prison since December 2024, is suffering from extremely difficult health conditions as a result of contracting scabies since last April. 

He has not received the necessary treatment to date, despite more than six months having passed since his infection. The PPS indicated that his condition has seriously deteriorated, with boils spreading across his body and visible cracks and ulcers appearing on his skin during his last lawyers’ visit to Ofer Prison.

Abu Hlayel explained that he was subjected to an assault by prison repression forces last September after repeatedly requesting medical treatment. They fired rubber bullets at him, exacerbating his health condition. He added that he currently suffers from severe itching and painful ulcers that prevent him from sleeping. He is denied any treatment, in addition to a sharp drop in his weight, which has reached 49 kg due to the systematic starvation policy against him.

The PPS explained that detainee Abu Hlayel is one of thousands of detainees who have contracted Scabies skin disease inside Israeli occupation prisons. The disease has become a tool of torture due to the Israeli Prison Service's deliberate efforts to maintain the conditions that cause it. These include a shortage of cleaning materials and disinfectants, depriving prisoners of regular showers, and a lack of clean clothes (most prisoners only have one change of clothes). Prisoners are forced to hand-wash their clothes and are prevented from air-drying them, which keeps them damp and contributes to the spread of skin diseases.

The PPS added that the prison administration ignores prisoners' repeated requests for treatment or transfer of patients to clinics, making the spread of epidemics and skin diseases one of the most prominent manifestations of the systematic crime that worsened after the genocide and led to the killing of a number of prisoners.

The PPS noted that legal efforts undertaken by specialized institutions, including petitioning the Supreme Court of the occupation to compel the prison administration to provide treatment and eliminate the causes of the disease's spread, were met with a superficial and limited response. The disease has since spread again in central prisons such as the Naqab and Ofer prisons.

The PPS asserts that the continuation of this policy reflects the prison system's intent to kill prisoners and to use denial of treatment as a tool for torture, as part of what are known as medical crimes.

The PPS noted that prisoners in occupation prisons face a escalating health catastrophe, alongside daily forms of oppression and violations, as part of a policy aimed at gradually torturing and killing them. It noted that the occupation authorities make no secret of their criminal intentions, as expressed by the so-called National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir through his repeated calls to legislate a law to execute prisoners and to shoot them in the head instead of arresting them.

The PPS affirms that the tremendous transformations witnessed in the lives of Palestinian political prisoners following the genocide have made it a direct extension of the genocide and one of its most prominent aspects, which continues to this day.