It was astonishing to read about the death of Ahmad Saeed Tazazaa (20 years old) on 3 August 2025 inside Israel’s Magiddo prison. Just months earlier , reports emerged that Israeli forces had killed another Palestinian prisoner in Megiddo, Walid Khaled Abdullah Ahmad (16 years old), on 24 March. Both young men, boys really, had been picked up from the West Bank; Ahmad from Jenin and Walid from Silwad. Initially, the Israelis remained silent about the death of Walid but later consented to an autopsy.

The report is painful. The post-mortem of Walid revealed that he had suffered from extreme body muscle and fat wasting, air collections in his chest and abdomen (‘likely caused by blunt trauma’), and there was evidence of oedema and congestion in his large intestine (‘consistent with traumatic injury’). The autopsy confirmed that he died because of starvation and beatings by Israeli prison guards.

Khaled Ahmed, Walid’s father, recalled that his son was not only a top student, but also the highest scorer in his local football team. ‘Walid was preparing to join the Palestinian national team,’ said Khaled. Walid was killed three days before Suleiman al-Obeid, known as the “Palestinian Pele”, was killed by Israeli fire while waiting in line to get food for his family in Gaza. In just a few days, football lost two of its brightest stars to the Israeli genocide.

Today, 10,800 Palestinian political detainees and political prisoners languish in Israeli jails. Since 1967, 320 political prisoners have died inside Israeli prisons. On 12 August 2025, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society published a report detailing the state of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. The report is painful to read because of the harsh conditions described. The Society notes that the Israeli prison administration ‘in a systematic and planned manner’ has ‘deprived prisoners of their humanity’ to the point of causing........

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