For nearly a year and a half, Nader Abu Hilal has waited for news of his son.
Each update that reaches the family home in Dura, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, brings fresh anxiety. The latest reports suggest that Azmi Abu Hilal, a 31-year-old lawyer with dwarfism, has lost significant weight, suffers from persistent pain and may be battling a serious illness while held in Israeli detention .
"We want our sons to be free," Nader Abu Hilal, Azmi’s father, tells The New Arab . "We were shocked by the violent manner of his arrest, as special forces and a large contingent of the Israeli army stormed our home, searched its contents, and arrested my son Azmi."
Azmi was detained by Israeli forces in January 2024 and accused of alleged involvement in a shooting near Bethlehem that killed an Israeli - allegations he denies.
His father said the family suffered another blow when Israeli forces demolished their home during Ramadan earlier this year, more than a year after Azmi's arrest.
The demolition formed part of a policy frequently used against the families of Palestinians accused of carrying out attacks.
While Azmi remains imprisoned without charge, Amani Sarahla, a member of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS), told The New Arab there was a high probability he would eventually be handed a life sentence, something the 31-year-old remains unaware of.
Abdullah Zughari, head of the PPS, told The New Arab that Azmi's case reflected the wider conditions facing roughly 10,000 Palestinian detainees and prisoners held in Israeli custody.
"What concerns us is not the reason for the arrest or the charges levelled against the prisoner," Zughari said. "What concerns us is the occupation's disregard for the basic human rights guaranteed by international law to protect prisoners inside the prisons." Another arena of genocide In a statement on Monday, the PPS said Israel's war had turned prisons into another "arena of genocide" through a "comprehensive, systemic regime of torture" that has killed more than 100 Palestinian detainees and prisoners, 89 of whom have so far been identified.
The organisation pointed to Azmi's case as an example of the most severe period Palestinian prisoners have endured in Israeli detention.
Zughari said prisoners' lives had been transformed into "a living hell" through ongoing assaults, solitary confinement, medical neglect, starvation and what he described as systematic torture
Azmi, who has dwarfism, has seen his health deteriorate sharply behind bars, according to both his family and the advocacy group.
"[Azmi's] weight has dropped to no more than 45 kilograms," Abu Hilal said. "The prison administration deliberately refuses to provide him with the necessary treatment despite interventions by lawyers, human rights advocates, and relevant institutions. Attempts by lawyers to visit him have also been rejected."
Held in Ofer prison , the PPS says Azmi was shot by Israeli prison forces and required medical treatment.
His father said the family learned from released detainees that Azmi underwent medical tests around four months ago and was informed he had blood cancer. However, he was never tested again despite repeated requests in court to transfer him to hospital.
"Lawyers also exerted pressure to secure medical treatment for him, but to no avail," Abu Hilal said, with PPS also noting that the prison administration ignores the detainees' demands for treatment or transfer to clinics.
"The occupation deliberately subjects our sons in prison to torture," Abu Hilal said. "As a prisoner's father, I do not want to see my son returned to me in a coffin."
Azmi has been suffering from persistent abdominal and stomach pain, as well as loss of balance, conditions that have added severe psychological distress to his physical suffering. 'Tool of torture' The advocacy group said Azmi has also been suffering from scabies for more than a year after first contracting the skin disease in April 2025. The PPS says thousands of Palestinian detainees have been infected.
"The disease has become a tool of torture due to the prison administration's deliberate maintenance of the conditions that cause it," the organisation said.
"The disease has once again begun to spread in central prisons, emphasising that the continuation of this policy reflects the prison system's intent to kill prisoners and use the denial of medical treatment as a tool for their torture, within the framework of what is known as medical crimes."
According to the PPS, a lack of cleaning supplies and disinfectants, restrictions on regular showers, the refusal to provide clean clothing, and forcing prisoners to repeatedly wash and reuse a single set of spare clothes have all contributed to the spread of the disease.
"[Azmi] was visited again by PPS lawyers in recent weeks, and he continues to suffer from scabies, which has spread sores across his entire body," the organisation said.
The PPS added that the denial of adequate treatment has turned skin diseases into "one of the most prominent manifestations of the systematic crime that worsened after the start of the Gaza genocide", contributing to the deaths of a number of detainees.
The group said attempts to challenge prison conditions through Israel's Supreme Court had been met with a limited and superficial response.
Zughari called on international organisations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, the United Nations and international courts, to take practical steps to protect prisoners.
"We are facing a humanitarian, human rights and legal catastrophe," he said, warning that detainees were at risk of "imminent death" if conditions inside Israeli prisons continued unchanged.
Abu Hilal said Palestinian detainees were facing "one of the harshest prison administrations in the history of our Palestinian cause".
He recalled that two of his other sons had previously been imprisoned by Israel and returned home physically weakened, having lost significant weight and suffered the effects of inadequate food, poor medical care and limited exposure to sunlight.
Now, he fears for Azmi's life.
"The occupation and its prison administration continue to deliberately torture our children," Abu Hilal said. "Our message to the world, to free people everywhere, and to institutions concerned with human rights, is to take action for our sons in prison.
"Their bodies have wasted away and become little more than skeletons," he added.
"We consider our son a prisoner for the sake of God, and we hope that he and all prisoners will enjoy freedom."