Thirty-Nine Palestinian Journalists in Occupation Prisons, Nineteen Held Without Charge
More than 260 Palestinian journalists have been martyred since the aggression began. Another 39 are in prison today. Two have been forcibly disappeared since October 7, 2023, and the occupation still won’t say where they are.
Nineteen of the 39 are held in administrative detention, with no charge and no trial. The occupation holds them on what it calls a secret file, a designation that strips away the most basic fair-trial guarantees.
The Numbers
Prisoners’ rights groups say the pattern is deliberate: systematic targeting meant to silence the witnesses to the crimes. Arrests climbed with the killing. The occupation has detained more than 250 journalists from across the Palestinian territories over the same period, among them women reporters, photographers, and field documenters. The Prisoners’ Media Office has been keeping the count, case by case.
One journalist is dead from occupation bullets. Another sits in a cell accused of “incitement.” A third is held somewhere the occupation refuses to name.
Taken together, they describe one of the widest systematic campaigns against Palestinian journalism.
Gaza and the Disappeared
Gaza’s journalists carry the heaviest share. At least nine of them are in prison. Nidal al-Wahidi and Haytham Abdel Wahed have been forcibly disappeared since October 7, 2023. The occupation has never disclosed where it holds them or what has become of them. Enforced disappearance on those terms is a clear violation of international humanitarian law.
Killed in Custody
Journalist Marwan Harzallah was martyred inside Megiddo prison in March 2026, after the occupation deliberately denied him treatment. An earlier injury had already forced the amputation of his leg. Sick prisoners inside occupation jails face a policy of slow killing. Harzallah’s death is where it ends.
On August 9, 2026, word came that journalist Ihab Diab, held by the occupation, had been martyred. His name joins the list of journalists martyred inside the prisons.
House Arrest
In Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the territories occupied in 1948, the occupation works by other means. It has placed journalists under house arrest, among them Saeed Hasanein in the 1948 territories, Sumayya Jawabreh in Nablus, and Bayan al-Ju’ba in Jerusalem. House arrest keeps them off the street and away from their work. The occupation’s tools change. Its target does not.
Inside the Prisons
Prisoners’ rights groups have documented what detained journalists face behind the walls: physical and psychological torture, systematic starvation, and medical neglect. Solitary confinement is part of it, along with daily humiliation and the denial of basic rights.
The occupation draws no line between a journalist and any other political prisoner. Sometimes it punishes the journalist harder, precisely because he documented the crimes and carried the truth to the world.
War Crimes and Accountability
The Prisoners’ Media Office says what Palestinian journalists are living through amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The killing is systematic, the detention arbitrary. Journalists are still being disappeared. The violations inside the prisons have not stopped.
The office repeats its demands: free every detained journalist now, reveal the fate of those forcibly disappeared, and bring those responsible before the relevant international courts and bodies.
From the first moment of the genocide against the Palestinian people, the Palestinian journalist stopped being the one carrying the truth out and became a target for killing, arrest, and disappearance. To the occupation, the camera that filmed the destruction and the microphone that recorded the voices of the victims are evidence to be erased, by assassination or by arrest.
The world has followed this war through the lenses of Palestinian journalists. Who documents their suffering? And who tells the journalist’s story when he becomes the news himself, behind bars?
