The treatment of the late terrorist Nasser Abu Hamid, who died of cancer last week in an Israeli hospital, cost more than NIS 150,000 ($42,000), Reshet Bet Radio reported Thursday morning.
Abu Hamid, who was close to the terrorist leader and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s heir apparent Marwan Barghouti, died on December 21 from terminal cancer at the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center in Be’er Ya’akov.
According to Dr. Esnat Lev Zion Korah, the director of Assaf Harofeh Hospital, prisoner Abu Hamid was treated for about a year at her facility not only with the standard chemotherapy treatment but with the most expensive and advanced immunotherapy treatments available.
Referring to the Palestinian Authority’s claims that Abu Hamid was subjected to medical neglect in prison, Dr. Lev Zion Korech said that his treatment behind bars was also excellent, and the prison doctors were in regular contact with the treating doctors in the hospital.
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said on December 24 eulogized “the captive martyr Nasser Abu Hamid, after he spent more than thirty years in the Israeli occupation prisons and was subjected to slow killing through deliberate medical negligence on the part of the occupation authorities.”
In 2002, when he was 22, Abu Hamid was indicted at the Jerusalem District Court for his involvement in a series of attacks and murders of Jews, for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment. There were 13 different counts, including the murder of the Kahana couple, planting a bomb in the Bianchini cafe in Jerusalem, the murder of Gad Rajoan in Atarot, and the attack on the Sea Food Market in Tel Aviv.
In a much-belated decision, outgoing Defense Minister Benny Gantz announced that Abu Hamid’s body will be kept in Israel and not be transferred to the Palestinian Authority. The announcement follows a Cabinet decision from two years ago whereby Israel would hold on to the bodies of dead terrorists until Hamas releases the bodies of Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin who were killed in Gaza in 2014, as well as two living Israeli citizens.
