Bethlehem -
The freed Palestinian prisoner, Hussein Masalma, 39, died of leukemia, which he contracted while he was in the Israeli occupation prisons.
Large crowds attended this morning, Thursday, the body of the martyr in the town of Al-Khader, and Palestinian institutions concerned with the affairs of prisoners accused the Israeli occupation of exposing him to medical negligence that led to his death.
Masalma was arrested from his town of Al-Khader, south of Bethlehem, in 2002, during his participation in the resistance to the occupation in the second Al-Aqsa Intifada, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
During the past year, his health condition deteriorated significantly, and the Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Authority said at the time that he was subjected to deliberate medical neglect, which exacerbated his health and reached the brink of death, and in this case he was left in the Negev desert prison in southern occupied Palestine without providing the necessary medical treatments.
After widespread human rights pressure, and due to his poor health and the approaching date of his release in 2022, the occupation prisons administration decided to release him last March, and he was transferred to the Israeli Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, and it was found that he had leukemia and that his health condition is very critical.
Unfortunately, he was not released from the hospital only a few days ago, and he was admitted to the Istishari Hospital in Ramallah in the center of the West Bank, in preparation for his transfer to Turkey to complete treatment. However, his health deteriorated during the past 24 hours, and his death was announced today.
His body was transferred at dawn today, Thursday, to Beit Jala Governmental Hospital in Bethlehem, before his funeral.
The general strike spread throughout the Bethlehem governorate after the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) and other Palestinian factions announced, in a statement, that Masalma had died as a result of medical negligence in prisons.
The factions called for a comprehensive strike in Bethlehem, and urged confrontation with the occupation at various points of contact in support of the prisoners in the occupation's prisons and in protest against the medical negligence that led to the death of Masalma.