The Israeli authorities refused the early release of the elderly prisoner Fouad Al-Shobaki, 82, after spending 17 years in prison, of which only 8 months are left. The Israeli refusal and intransigence come despite the prisoner's deteriorating critical health condition. 

Al-Shobaki is the oldest Palestinian prisoner in Israeli occupation prisons. He is from the Gaza Strip and has been detained since 2006.

It is noteworthy that Al-Shobaki, after four years in the Palestinian prison of Ariha under British-American supervision, ended up in Israeli prisons after the occupation forces kidnapped him from Ariha prison in March 2006.

Major General Al-Shobaki is a former financial official in the Palestinian General Security Service and a former financial advisor to the late President Yasser Arafat.

Immediately after his arrest, Al-Shobaki was interrogated about the so-called Karen; a weapons ship that “Israel” intercepted in January 2002 in the Red Sea and he was accused of the funding. He was arrested by the Palestinian Authority in May of the same year and was transferred to Ariha Prison.

Today, Al-Shobaki suffers from high blood pressure, prostate cancer, and diseases of the eyes, stomach, and heart, according to the Palestinian News Agency (Wafa).

On the 14th of last June, the Israeli committee decided to appoint this session after strained efforts in the past few weeks, hoping that its decision would be “a new opportunity that leads to the release of the Palestinian prisoner Al-Shobaki, who suffers from difficult health conditions, which are exacerbated by his continued detention,” per the local news agency.

Meanwhile, Al Quds Press news agency quoted Al-Shobaki's daughter, Rania, as saying that her father's health situation makes it impossible for him to spend even a single day inside an Israeli occupation prison.

Several demonstrations were previously organized in a number of Palestinian cities in solidarity with the prisoners in the occupation prisons, and the demonstrators chanted slogans rejecting any compromise over their lives.

Read more: The Policy of Neglect; Behind the Walls of the Occupation Prisons