Deceased Palestinian prisoners Samih Aliwi, 61, from Nablus in the occupied West Bank (L), and Anwar Aslim, 44, from Gaza (Photo via social media)

Ramallah, November 16 (RHC)-- Two Palestinian prisoners from the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip have died in Israeli custody, a pair of Palestinian prisoners' rights groups say.

The Commission of Detainees' and Ex-Detainees' Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) announced in a joint statement that Samih Aliwi, who had been held on administrative detention since October 21 last year, died on November 6, 2024, six days after being transferred from the Ramla prison clinic to the Israeli Saveroff Hospital.

Anwar Aslim, meanwhile, died on Thursday. His health condition deteriorated sharply during a transfer from the Negev prison to Soroka Hospital.

The Palestinian groups condemned the deaths, calling them part of a “broader, systematic policy of slow death and abuse by the Israeli prison system.”

Almost 70 Palestinians, many of them unidentified, have been tortured to death by the Israeli regime in its prisons since October 2023 amid the genocidal war on Gaza.

For its part, the Hamas resistance movement roundly condemned Israel for the deaths of the two Palestinian prisoners, stating that such crimes fall within the policy of “slow death” that the Israel Prison Service is exercising against the inmates.

The Gaza-based group noted in a statement on Friday that the deaths of 61-year-old Aliwi, from Nablus in the occupied West Bank, and Aslim, 44, from Gaza point to the Zionist entity’s escalating atrocities against Palestinian prisoners.

Hamas underlined that the suffering of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, to which a large number of the detainees have fallen victim, adds to the Tel Aviv regime’s long list of violations of international law.  It demanded immediate action to protect Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails from further harm.

The resistance movement also urged all walks of the Palestinian nation, relatives of prisoners as well as human rights advocacy groups to intensify their efforts in support of prisoners through all available means and to expose Israeli crimes at the international arena.

Aliwi and Aslim's deaths bring the number of known Palestinian prisoners who have died in Israeli custody to 280 since 1967, while the identity and cause of death of dozens more remain undisclosed by Israeli authorities.

Since the outbreak of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, at least 43 prisoners have died in Israeli jails, according to Palestinian institutions.

Israel keeps Palestinian inmates under deplorable conditions without proper hygienic standards. Palestinian inmates have also been subject to systematic torture, harassment, and repression.  Human rights organizations say Israel continues to violate all rights and freedoms granted to prisoners by the Fourth Geneva Convention and international laws. 

According to the Palestine Detainees Studies Center, around 60 percent of the Palestinian prisoners detained in Israeli jails suffer from chronic diseases, a number of whom died in detention or after being released due to the severity of their cases.

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