The Checkpoint and the Wait
Iba Ammar al-Aghbar, a 24-year-old pharmacy student from Nablus, was supposed to walk free last Thursday. Her family went to the checkpoint to meet her. They came back without her.
It was not the first time. Each scheduled release has ended the same way. The family arrives, and Iba’ stays behind bars.
Her family told the Prisoners’ Media Office she had a release order set for March 14, 2026. “It didn’t happen,” the family said. “Her detention was extended under what’s known as an emergency extension until April 9, 2026, then extended again until May 17, 2026.”
They have almost no information about her condition. The state of emergency inside Israeli prisons has severed nearly all contact. The occupation blocks lawyer visits. What little reaches the family is bleak: Iba, like the other women prisoners, faces starvation, neglect, and conditions stripped bare. Cut off from the outside world, the women rely on newly arrested prisoners for any news at all.
The Prisoners’ Media Office says roughly 90 Palestinian women are now held in Israeli prisons. Iba’ is one of about 24 under administrative detention, imprisoned without charge, held on undisclosed evidence.
Israeli forces arrested her on March 16, 2025, after raiding her home. They placed her directly into administrative detention for six months. The justification: a “secret file.” No charges were ever filed. The extensions have continued since.
Before her arrest, Iba was in her fifth year of a Doctor of Pharmacy program at Al-Najah National University in Nablus. She is one of about 13 female university students held by Israel without charges, pulled from their studies close to graduation.
Her education is now frozen indefinitely.
During her detention, Iba recited the entire Quran twice in a single sitting. The occupation restricts books, writing materials, and copies of the Quran inside prisons.
Her family is counting days again, watching May 17 approach and bracing for another extension. For families of administrative detainees, every release date carries the threat of renewal. Iba al-Aghbar’s case is one of many. Dozens of Palestinian women are locked in the same cycle, their detention extended without explanation, their families left waiting without end.
