RAMALLAH, December 10, 2025 (WAFA) – The Arab League’s General Secretariat has called on the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to include the deliberate medical negligence against Palestinian detainees in its ongoing investigations into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israel in the occupied Palestinian Territory
In a statement issued today by the Palestine and Occupied Arab Territories Sector of the Arab League's General Secretariat, the Arab League condemned the medical neglect that led to the death of Abdul Rahman Sufian Muhammad al-Sabateen 21, from Husan town west of Bethlehem, who died in an Israeli hospital after his health deteriorated due to poor detention conditions.
The statement stressed that the Arab League regards Al-Sabatin’s death, the sixth Palestinian detainee killed in Israeli prisons since the beginning of this year, as a new crime, adding to the record of systematic Israeli violations against Palestinian prisoners, in clear breach of the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law.
It further denounced the deliberate medical negligence policy practiced by Israeli prison authorities against thousands of Palestinian detainees, including children, women, and the sick, describing it as a form of slow killing and internationally prohibited torture.
The Arab League urged the international community, human rights and humanitarian organizations, particularly the International Committee of the Red Cross, to intervene urgently to pressure Israel to release Al-Sabatin’s body to his family, affirming its full support for the Palestinian people in achieving freedom and independence.
A statement issued by the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) and the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs said that Al-Sabateen had a court session on November 25, 2025, during which—according to his family who attended—he showed no visible signs of serious health issues, despite having suffered a severe abdominal injury a year before his detention, which had later stabilized.
The two institutions added that Al-Sabateen’s death adds to the record of slow killings carried out by the Israeli occupation against Palestinian prisoners and detainees, as well as to the series of systematic field executions that form a central part of the ongoing genocidal campaign being carried out against the Palestinian people.
The Commission and PPS affirmed that Al-Sabateen’s killing comes amid the occupation’s accelerated push to approve a law for executing prisoners, and against the backdrop of alarming findings revealed by human rights organizations—including some Israeli groups—regarding the number of Palestinians killed by the occupation in prisons and detention camps since the start of the ongoing genocidal campaign
Admissions from Israeli authorities have also revealed a sharp rise in the number of detainees killed in prisons since the appointment of the far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to the so-called Ministry of National Security, who has, even before the war, systematically targeted and killed prisoners and stripped them of their basic rights.
The number of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails has exceeded 9,300, in addition to hundreds of detainees held in Israeli military camps. Among the prisoners are more than 50 women and around 350 children.
T.R.
