PPS Warns of “Health Disaster” Among Palestinian Detainees in Israel’s Megiddo Prison

Occupied Palestine (Quds News Network)- The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) has warned of a “health disaster” among Palestinian detainees at Israel’s infamous Megiddo Prison due to the spread of contagious diseases.

PPS said it had documented reports from detainees of outbreaks of scabies and other contagious diseases, stating that most of the detainees “suffer from health problems and face difficult and tragic detention conditions”.

It accused Israeli prison authorities of denying detainees “necessary resources that could help limit the spread of the disease”, including nutritious food, clothing, personal hygiene items and adequate exposure to light and ventilation, adding that the spread of disease encouraged by these conditions will inevitably lead to more deaths.

It highlighted that the conditions place hundreds of child detainees at risk, citing the death of 17-year-old Walid Ahmed at the prison on Saturday without being able to confirm the circumstances of his death.

The Palestinian Liaison Officr told Ahmed’s family that their son suffered from scabies and amoebic dysentery, according to Defense for Children- Palestine (DCIP).

Ahmed is the first Palestinian child to ever die inside Israeli prisons, according to DCIP. Israeli occupation is withholding his body from his family.

“Walid was taken from his family in the middle of the night, beaten and abused by Israeli soldiers, and imprisoned in Israel, where he was fed meager portions of rotten food and subjected to overcrowded, unsanitary conditions while at the same time isolated completely from his family,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at DCIP.

“Walid is the first Palestinian child prisoner in history to die in Israeli custody. It is impossible to understate the urgency with which the international community must finally hold Israeli authorities accountable before more Palestinian children imprisoned in Israel’s dungeons suffer Walid’s fate.”

Ahmed was kept in poor conditions with limited communication from his lawyer and family. At the time of his death, he was in pre-trial detention, DCIP said.

“The lawyer asked Walid, ‘how are you? How is your health?’” recounted Walid’s father, Khaled, in a video interview with DCIP last year, “He asked how the food was and Walid told him it was bad. The judge immediately cut off the call.”

Megiddo Prison has long been known for its brutal treatment of Palestinian detainees.

According to Haaretz, prisoners there have been subjected to electric shocks, dog attacks, and severe beatings. Some were stripped naked, bound hand and foot for days, and denied food and blankets, with several hospitalised due to the abuse.

A 2024 report by the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs further detailed the horrors inside Megiddo, documenting systematic torture, medical neglect, sexual violence and routine beatings.

Ahmed is the sixty-third Palestinian detainee to have died in detention since Israel unleashed its assault on Gaza in October 2023 – a toll which includes at least 40 people from Gaza, according to the PPS.

It added that the period since October 2023 has seen an “unprecedented” rise in the “systematic crimes practised in [Israeli] prisons,” making it the “bloodiest in the history of the prisoner movement since 1967”.

Ahmed’s death brings the total number of Palestinian deaths in Israeli custody since 1967 to 300, although they noted that the figures are likely an underestimate as dozens of detainees captured in Gaza are subject to enforced disappearance.

PPS said that Israel is holding the bodies of 72 Palestinian detainees, including 61 since the beginning of its war on Gaza.

As of early March, the number of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli custody has topped 9,500, including over 350 children, 21 women and 3,405 administrative detainees, according to the PPS.

Ahmed is the 18th Palestinian child killed in the occupied West Bank in 2025, according to DCIP.