Ten Arrests, Fifteen Years, Six Children and the Reproduction of Absence: The Tahayneh Case

She Waited Years for Her Husband to Come Home. Israeli Forces Took Her a Week Before He Did.
Hanaa Tahayneh, a mother of six from Jenin, is being held without charge in Damon prison.

Israeli occupation forces arrested Hanaa Muhyiddin Tahayneh on June 8, 2026. Her husband was a week from freedom.

Sharif Taher Tahayneh, 56, was two years into his latest detention. For that one week, the couple’s six children lived in a house with neither parent. To them, it felt like forever. When Sharif did come home, the house was still missing someone. With Hanaa in prison, his release was only half a celebration.

Soldiers raided the family home at 3 a.m. They arrested Hanaa and would not let her say goodbye to her children. When the children tried to see her one last time, a female soldier pointed her gun at them and held them back.

The soldiers blindfolded Hanaa and bound her hands so tightly it hurt. She asked them to loosen the restraints. They refused. Still blindfolded, she was marched on foot to a spot far from the house.

They took her first to HaSharon prison, where two female soldiers beat her, aiming for her head. Israeli authorities later moved her to Damon prison and ordered her held for six months in administrative detention, a practice that lets Israel imprison people without charge or trial.

Her case has drawn wider attention since Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir descended on Damon prison and a video of the visit surfaced. In it, he asks Hanaa where she is from. Jenin, she says. He tells her to carry a message to the people of the city: prisons are no longer “hotels,” and conditions for prisoners will get worse.

The video has deepened the family’s fear for her at a time when violations against Palestinian women prisoners are escalating.

Hanaa has migraines, rheumatism, and irritable bowel syndrome. She has varicose veins in her left foot, severe pain in her right, high blood lipids, an allergy, and a skin rash.

She needs medical care and is not getting it. Her family says prison medical staff have treated her with negligence and racism, even though Israeli authorities have medical reports confirming she urgently needs treatment.

Some of the children are still in school, including two who are 13 and 10. One daughter is preparing for the Tawjihi, the national exam at the end of high school, and needs her mother beside her more than ever. The longer Hanaa goes untreated, the more the family worries.

The Tahaynehs are from Jenin. Sharif has spent 15 years in Israeli prisons over 10 arrests, and he missed the births of most of his children. Through all of it, Hanaa, now 49, kept the family going on her own, as both mother and father. She had waited a long time to see the whole family under one roof.

The occupation decided otherwise.

Two of the children were 5 years old when Sharif came home from one of his earlier detentions. He had missed their childhood up to that point. For years, the family lived on edge, counting the days until his release. They never got used to his absence, however long it lasted.

Hanaa’s arrest wiped out what was left of their hope that life would return to normal. A family can learn patience while a father sits in prison. A mother’s arrest is another matter. It strikes at the family’s heart and leaves a gap that time does not close.

The Tahaynehs have been through two absences back to back. First the father’s, which stretched over years. Then the mother’s, just days before the family was to be reunited. Family members say those days were among the hardest they have known. No matter how old children get, parents are where they turn for safety and warmth.

Dozens of Palestinian families are going through the same thing. The city or village changes. The story the occupation writes for them hardly does.

Now, for the first time, Sharif is the one waiting. He is waiting for his wife to come home, as she once waited years for him. And their children are waiting for the day the family is together again, far from prison gates.