Walid Daqqah

Walid Daqqah (Palestine) was a 62-year-old Palestinian writer, activist, and political prisoner from the Palestinian town of Baqa al-Gharbiyye in Israel, who died on April 7, 2024, in Israeli detention at Assaf Harofeh Hospital after 38 years of incarceration. He was arrested in 1986 in connection with the kidnapping and murder of an Israeli soldier and sentenced to 37 years in prison. He completed his original sentence in March 2023, but Israeli authorities extended his imprisonment by an extra 2 years, claiming a charge of smuggling a phone into prison. In December 2022, he was diagnosed with myelofibrosis, a rare and aggressive bone marrow cancer that also interferes with the body’s normal production of blood cells. He also suffered from chronic lung disease. Rights organizations such as Addameer and Amnesty International have repeatedly called for his immediate release on humanitarian grounds, citing evidence that Israeli prison authorities denied him urgent medical intervention, delayed diagnoses, and withheld the treatment he was prescribed, allowing his disease to progress to a critical stage. After October 7, 2023, his condition deteriorated drastically. He was tortured, humiliated, and denied family visits, including those with his wife and daughter, whom he had created by sneaking his sperm out of the prison at the age of 57. They were not permitted to say farewell to him when he was dying. When Daqqah’s death was announced, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir publicly lamented that he had not been sentenced to death, and subsequently thanked police for destroying a mourning tent set up in his village. Following his death, Israeli officials denied his family access to his body. He was the fourteenth Palestinian political prisoner to die in Israeli detention in the six months since October 7. He was also one of the longest-serving Palestinian prisoners in Israeli history, an author, and a parent who never saw his daughter outside of the prison walls.