On 7 October 2023, Palestinian detainee Ahmed Hatem Mohammed Khdeirat, 22, from Al-Dhahiriya near al-Khalil, was martyred in the Zionist Soroka Hospital after a lengthy battle against severe medical neglect. Ahmed Khdeirat has been imprisoned without charge or trial under “administrative detention” — arbitrary military orders — since 23 May 2024 (nearly 18 months), with his detention renewed repeatedly despite his precarious health. His martyrdom was not accidental, but a clear example of the Zionist policy of “slow assassination” being applied to the Palestinian prisoners inside the occupation jails.
Ahmed Khdeirat has type 1 diabetes, requiring ongoing, proper treatment with insulin, which he was routinely denied by occupation forces. Like many other Palestinian prisoners held in unsanitary, overcrowded conditions and systematically and deliberately denied access to cleaning and hygiene products, he developed scabies. He also experienced frequent low blood sugar levels due to his illness and found it difficult to move. As of August 2025, when he was visited by a lawyer, he had been unable to leave a medical bed for two months, and his weight had dropped to 40 kg.
His martyrdom is an example of the targeting of a medically vulnerable Palestinian for arbitrary detention without charge or trial, deliberately denying him medication, exposing him to further infection, epitomizing the policy of “slow killing,” as described by the Palestinian prisoners’ movement.
Today, 8 October, there was a general commercial strike in Al-Dhahriya in mourning and outrage at the martyrdom of Ahmed Khdeirat.
Since 7 October 2023, at least 78 Palestinian prisoners have been martyred in Zionist prisons, of those identified, including at least 46 Palestinians abducted from Gaza, with over 315 martyrs of the prisoners’ movement since 1967. The list (below) is not complete, as it does not include all Palestinian prisoners from Gaza, for whom the occupation continues to hide the numbers, names and current situation of the thousands of people its genocidal forces have abducted amid the ongoing assault on the Strip. The occupation continues to imprison 85 bodies of the martyred prisoners, holding them hostage in an attempt to extract an advantage in prisoner exchanges with the Palestinian resistance.
The martyrdom of Palestinian prisoners is an assassination campaign inside the occupation prisons and detention camps, through institutionalized physical and psychological torture and beatings, starvation, sexual assault, the spread of contagious disease, particularly scabies, and deliberate denial of medical care, as well as medical neglect and abuse, in parallel with the ongoing escalated genocide in Gaza and throughout occupied Palestine. These war crimes and crimes against humanity are accompanied by the denial of family and legal visits, preventing any external surveillance of the mistreatment suffered by imprisoned Palestinians.
Every dollar, Euro and pound exchanged with the occupation, every weapon given to the genocidal forces, and every intelligence-sharing and police-training mission between the Zionist project and the imperialist powers, especially the US, Canada, France, Germany, Britain and EU countries, are evidence of full complicity in the ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity, against the Palestinian prisoners and the Palestinian people as a whole.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network sends its deepest condolences to the Khdeirat family, the Palestinian prisoners’ movement, and the Palestinian people as a whole. Glory to the martyr!
In memory and honor of Ahmed, and all of the martyrs, wounded and prisoners of Palestine, and of the resistance that continues to meet the occupiers and genocidaires with fire, we urge all to organize and take action, to escalate the struggle in the imperial core, to bring the genocide to an end, to break the siege on Gaza, to free the Palestinian prisoners and to free Palestine from the river to the sea.
Download this poster of the martyr Ahmed Khdeirat — as well as this group of prisoners’ posters — to include in your next action.
Poster below (Download PDF):
Discover more from Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
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