Palestinian leaders and human rights groups on Tuesday accused Israeli prison authorities for Abu Hamdiyeh’s death, saying that the prisoner did not receive treatment until his cancer had spread.

“The death of Abu Hamdya can be labeled as direct assignation where Israel left him to die without providing him the required medications. Abu Hamdya suffered larynx cancer for the past few months,” UFree Network to defend the rights of Palestinian prisoners said in a statement.

“Despite his chronic disease, Maysra was medically ignored by Israeli prison authorities. He was denied health care and admitted to the hospital very late.”

According, to his family, many requests were made so specialized doctors can see him. However, the Israelis refused all those requests and continue to give him normal pain killers instead of real medical treatment.

Meanwhile, an official Palestinian human rights report has affirmed that chronic disease had spread among Palestinian prisoners in Israeli occupation jails, according to the Palestinian Information Center.

A report by the ministry of prisoners in Ramallah on Monday said that 25 Palestinian prisoners are cancer-stricken due to medical neglect in Israeli prisons.

It said that most of the cancer cases were detected after spreading in the body of the victims.

The Information Center at the Ministry of Health in Ramallah said that cancer was the second-leading cause of death in Palestine during the last year, after heart disease.

More than 4,500 Palestinians are held as prisoners in Israeli jails. Israel claims most of them intended or carried out anti-Israeli attacks.

“It has come to light over the last week that the European Union (EU) has decided to upgrade its trade and diplomatic relations with the state of Israel despite the latter’s intensification of its occupation, colonization and apartheid against the Palestinian people,” Dignity for Freedom said in a statement.

The statement came a week after the EU decided to upgrade its trade and diplomatic relations with Israel in more than 60 areas, effectively reversing a freeze imposed after Israel’s war on Gaza.

Dignity for Freedom criticized EU’s latest move and described it as nothing less than outrageous, particularly given the EU’s continuous verbal criticism of Israel’s belligerent settlement plans. Dignity for Freedom assured that this “duplicitous behaviour epitomizes the reasons why the Palestinian people have no faith in the EU and that the Palestinian people will not accept only hollow words of condemnation.”

They also said that the EU must not be reminded that Israel “continuously flouts the will of the international community, remains in breach of UN Security Council resolutions, continues to violate its international law (including IHL) obligations, and daily abuses the human rights of the Palestinian people. Whether in its settlement policies, construction of the Apartheid Wall, its ethnic cleansing and ‘Judaization’ of Jerusalem and the Naqab (Negev), its criminal blockade of Gaza, its denial of the UN-sanctioned rights of the Palestinian refugees, its violation of the rights of Palestinian prisoners (including children), its demolition of Palestinian homes, and its countless other illegal policies, Israel is undoubtedly guilty of gross human rights abuses, deserving of condemnation and sanctions, not rewards and benefits.”

Dignity for Freedom called on the EU to immediately freeze the new upgrade of relations with Israel, suspend the existing EU-Israel Association Agreement until Israel complies with international law, investigate and halt the work of all European companies benefiting from Israel’s occupation and settlement policies.

Palestinians for Dignity was one of the groups which launched protests against President Mahmoud Abbas’ plans to host the Israeli vice premier in Ramallah for talks in June.