The Prisoners' Center for Studies reported on Friday that the Israeli prison administration pays no attention to the health conditions of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Insects and rats disturb prisoners and threaten their health, especially at old and decaying jails such as the Ramla/Nitsan underground prison, Beer Sheva, Nafha, and Shatta prisons, as well as in the open-air detention camp in the Negev .

Several prisoners were quoted by the center as saying that they had seen large rats, cockroaches, scorpions, and on occasion poisonous snakes in the prisons. These animals enter the prison cells either through sewage pipes or through fences in the open-air prison camps. The prisoners affirmed that they reported these dangers to the Israeli prison authorities.

In one prison section, a large number of prisoners confirmed that they could not sleep in their cells because of the constant presence of rats.

"One day as I entered the bathroom in the old section of Nafha prison, I saw a rat coming out of the sewage network," one prisoner reported.

Director of the center Raafat Hamdouna appealed to all organizations concerned with prisoners affairs to pressure the Israeli authorities to maintain clean and sanitary conditions in the prisons, and to institute medical checks for all prisoners at least once a year. He highlighted that recently there were reports of a widespread virus at Ramla prison, but nobody knew where it came from or what caused it.

Hamdouna also called for pressure on the Israeli authorities to close particularly old and unsanitary wings in the prisons and to transfer prisoners held there to facilities free from diseases and rodents.