OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)
After 38 years behind bars, the activist prisoner Walid Dakka (63 years old) passed away as a martyr due to Israeli medical negligence. He was repeatedly denied early release, due to his deteriorating health condition, by the Israeli prison authorities.
The Prisoners’ Affairs Authority and the Palestinian Prisoner Society confirmed on Sunday evening the news of the martyrdom of the cancer-stricken prisoner Walid Dakka from Baqa al-Gharbiyye in 1948 occupied Palestine.
Dakka has been detained since 1986, enduring a long series of medical crimes, according to a brief statement by the prisoners’ institutions.
The prisoner Dakka was born in 1961 and was arrested on March 25, 1986, along with a group of his comrades, including Ibrahim Abu Mokh, Rashidi Abu Mokh, and Ibrahim Bayadsa.
The steadfast intellectual
Walid Dakka emerged over the years of his long captivity as a political activist, distinguished writer, intellectual, thinker, skillful leader, and influential figure. He is considered one of the prominent thinkers and intellectuals of the prisoner movement and one of the most prominent prisoners who excelled in their writings about the Palestinian cause.
This prisoner spent his days and nights behind bars, believing in his cause, engaged in writing, immersed in the pages of history, reading, contemplating, analyzing, and classifying. The experiences of the prisoners tell us that such a hero is resistant to illness, resistant to breaking, resistant to dissolution in oppression, depression, and the psychological illness that the occupation desires.
Throughout his long journey in detention, he produced numerous books, studies, and articles, contributing to the understanding of the experience of imprisonment and its resistance. Among his notable works are “Parallel Time,” “Diaries of Resistance in Jenin Camp,” “Melting Consciousness,” and “The Secret of Oil.”
Allah Almighty decreed to test his beloved ones and elevate their status through patience. Our prisoner Dakka was afflicted with cancer that spread throughout his body and exhausted him.
The released prisoner Abdul Nasser Farwana says, “Despite the long years of imprisonment and the malignant disease that has sapped his body, his mind remained free, remaining attached to the causes of his people and his fellow prisoners. He continues to write the secret story of thousands of Palestinian prisoners who have suffered from illness, medical negligence, deliberate medical crimes, and slow death.”
A complicated health condition
Dakka suffered from a rare cancer in the bone marrow. He underwent surgery on April 12, 2023, to remove part of his right lung. He experienced inflammation and infection in his left lung, in addition to feeling weak and having difficulty speaking properly.
Despite repeated requests for the release of the sick prisoner, the occupation authority continuously refused, insisting on keeping our hero captive until he ascended as a martyr, his free soul overflowing, bearing witness to the brutality of the occupation and its crimes.
