Ramadan Behind Bars: 70 Women Prisoners in Damon Prison Face Starvation and Broken Spirits
Across Palestine, roughly seventy families are spending Ramadan with a grief only those who have lived it can understand.
An empty chair at the iftar table. Not just a missing body, but a life ripped from the ordinary rhythms of worship, family gatherings, and togetherness.
Around 24 of the women held in Israeli occupation prisons are mothers. Their children are fasting without them, without the warmth of home, without the familiar joy of preparing iftar together. On the other side of the walls, these mothers can barely swallow the little food they receive. The ache is not in their throats. It is in their hearts.
Most of the women currently detained in Damon Prison face charges of “incitement” on social media. Among them are journalists, engineers, lawyers, minors, and approximately 13 university students pulled from their classrooms.
The Prisoners’ Media Office has documented the conditions these women endure during Ramadan: cold and insufficient food, denial of religious observance, a ban on Ramadan timetables, a continuing state of emergency, no family visits, and severe restrictions on access to lawyers.
A Child Left Alone
Eiliyaa Melitat is 10 years old. Both pillars of her life have been taken from her.
Her father, Musab Melitat, was re-arrested on September 21, 2025, under a renewed administrative detention order. Her mother, Aseel Melitat, has been detained since June 3, 2025.
An entire family, scattered across prisons for Ramadan.
Eiliyaa should be helping her mother set the iftar table, studying beside her, arguing with her over suhoor. Instead, she waits for news of her parents through lawyers’ visits. At an age when she should know only her toys and her games, she already understands what detention, prison, and stolen freedom mean.
Testimonies of Pain
Dalal Fawaz al-Halabi, 55, a freed prisoner from the town of Rujeib near Nablus, was arrested on January 30, 2025, and released after a year of administrative detention. She describes how she spent Ramadan inside.
“We didn’t know when Ramadan had started,” she says. “We asked the administration for a timetable, and they brought one. We relied on it for iftar, prayer, and suhoor times.”
Days later, a newly arrived prisoner told them the timetable was wrong. They had been breaking their fast too early. The women were divided: some decided to make up the days; others considered their fasting valid. Today, timetables are banned from the prison entirely.
“They would collect all three meals before iftar and serve them ice cold,” al-Halabi adds. “For an entire month, not a single bowl of hot soup passed our lips. Even the tea was cold. It didn’t resemble tea.”
Food as a Weapon
Rula Ibrahim Hassanein, a freed journalist arrested on March 19, 2024, who spent ten months in captivity, confirms this:
“The food wouldn’t feed a bird. Poor quality, tiny portions, a deliberate policy to pressure us. They confiscated our kitchen tools, our belongings, our clothes.”
Bushra al-Tawil, a journalist released and then re-arrested under administrative detention, says: “The soup was water. Sometimes you’d find insects in it. The drinking water was unclean. The administration shows no respect for the sanctity of Ramadan. They obstruct prayer and Quran recitation, and give us wrong iftar times.”
Al-Halabi recalls scenes of deliberate humiliation: a guard peeling a mango or eating an apple in front of the prisoners, while the women were denied any fruit.
The vegetables were rotten, cut with plastic spoons because knives were confiscated. The rice was undercooked, barely three spoonfuls. Each prisoner received one egg a day, its yolk blackened from overcooking. Six pieces of bread for 24 hours. Legumes served with no seasoning or spices. If spoiled food was sent back, the punishment was hunger.
No accommodations were made for diabetic prisoners or those with chronic illnesses. Acamol and a glass of water served as the treatment for every condition.
Ramadan in Damon Prison is a brutal test of body and spirit: systematic starvation, deliberate humiliation, and denial of the most basic religious and human rights.Yet the women prisoners hold fast to their fasting, as if proving that the spirit is stronger than the bars.
