Six From One Family, Behind Israeli Bars
Six members of the Zeidat family from Bani Naim, near Hebron, are held in Israeli prisons. Two are serving life sentences. One has waited nearly three years for a final verdict. One sits in administrative detention. The youngest is 23.
The most recent arrest came on February 15, 2026. Israeli forces detained Mohammed Khaled Ali Zeidat, 28. An Israeli military commander then issued a six-month administrative detention order against him, renewable indefinitely without charge or trial.
The family’s ordeal began in June 2023, when Israeli forces raided the home of Salem Ali Zeidat, 45, and arrested him on charges of carrying out an attack near the Kiryat Arba settlement, where he allegedly opened fire on a military jeep and wounded three Israeli soldiers. Soldiers beat him during the raid. They assaulted his wife and children, terrified the younger ones, smashed the furniture, took 1,500 shekels in cash, seized the family car, and threw stun grenades on their way out.
Salem was interrogated for 55 days, then transferred to Nafha prison. He remains there with no final verdict. He suffers from a gallstone and ongoing gallbladder pain, and prison authorities have not provided treatment. He had been arrested four times before. All told, he has spent close to ten years inside Israeli prisons.
In January 2024, Israeli forces arrested Salem’s nephew Ahmad Mohammed Ali Zeidat, 26, together with another of Ahmad’s uncles, Mahmoud Ali Zeidat, 46. Both were charged with carrying out an attack on Israeli targets inside the 1948 territories. On April 8, 2025, the Lod military court sentenced each to life in prison plus 60 years and fined each two million shekels.
The arrests were not the end of it. On April 17, 2024, Israeli forces returned to Bani Naim and demolished Ahmad’s two-story home, where his wife and young daughter Sanaa lived. They demolished Mahmoud’s house too, leaving his wife and children with nothing.
On February 6, 2024, soldiers came back for two more. Mohammed Ali Salem Zeidat, 49, and his son Tareq, 23, each received two years and four months in prison and a fine of 8,000 shekels.
The six men are now scattered across three prisons. Mohammed Ali is in the Naqab. His son Tareq and the administrative detainee Mohammed Khaled are in Ofer. Ahmad and his two uncles, Mahmoud and Salem, are all in Nafha.
The Zeidats are not unusual. Dozens of Palestinian families across the Hebron district and the wider West Bank have multiple sons, brothers, and fathers behind Israeli bars. What has changed is the law now waiting for them. The Knesset’s approval of legislation authorizing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners falls hardest on those whose relatives are already spending life sentences.
Salem’s five children wait for any word from him. Mahmoud’s seven children received news of the death penalty law on top of a life sentence already handed down. Ahmad has a wife and a small daughter who cannot yet grasp what hangs over him. Mohammed Ali has six children waiting for his knock at the door. Mohammed Khaled has three children too young to understand what such an arrest can do to a young man’s life. Tareq, 23, should have been building a life. He is serving a sentence.
