A Mother Who Campaigned for Her Jailed Son Is Now Detained Too
Israeli occupation forces stormed Ahlam Ahmad Muhammad Shtiyeh’s home in Salem, east of Nablus, on May 25, 2026, and took her to Damon Prison. They placed her under administrative detention, without charge or trial. Days later, an order fixed her term at four months.
For years she had stood in the squares of Nablus, holding up a photo of her imprisoned son. Now the occupation holds her too.
Her family says she lives with high blood pressure, diabetes, and a thyroid condition, and needs medication every day. Since her arrest they have heard nothing clear about her health inside Damon. They know only that she is held under administrative detention.
Ahlam is one of around 20 Palestinian women held this way. Administrative detention lets the occupation renew the order again and again, with no fixed end.
The son she stood for is Yasar Munther Farid Shtiyeh, 35. He has spent years inside Israeli occupation prisons. The occupation first arrested him in 2008 and held him for 10 months. It took him again in 2014, for 23 months. The third time, in 2017, ran longest: nearly seven straight years, until his release in 2024.
His freedom did not last. On September 25, 2024, occupation forces seized him again and placed him under administrative detention, where he remains under one renewed order after another.
Today he sits in Naqab Prison, worn down by the years behind bars. Word of his mother’s arrest may have reached him there. His parents had dreamed of a settled life for him, the kind his peers live, a future built away from prison walls.
The family had waited for Yasar’s release to start over. Now it carries a double burden: a mother held under administrative detention without charge, a son arrested again and again for more than a decade. The occupation no longer lets solidarity go unpunished, and it spares no one, mothers included. This is a pattern aimed at Palestinians and their families. The years of a life turn into waiting that never ends.
