Khadr Abd al-Al spent what he calls the worst Ramadan of his life inside Sde Teiman prison. No water for ablution. No space to pray. Any movement a guard mistook for worship brought a raid on the entire section.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Abd al-Al, a journalist and former prisoner, gave testimony alongside released prisoner Alaa al-Sarraj about conditions during Ramadan inside Israeli detention facilities. Their accounts document a system where religious practice was treated as a disciplinary offense and collective punishment followed any act of worship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At Sde Teiman, prisoners performed tayammum because water was unavailable. Prayer happened through eye movements alone. Prostration, standing, bowing: all forbidden. A single gesture mistaken for prayer was enough to trigger a response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“There is nothing of Ramadan in this prison,” Abd al-Al says. “The only thing available is torture, punishment, and inhumane treatment.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cameras tracked every movement. Prisoners could not speak to one another. A glance or a hand signal could be classified as a violation and punished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Abd al-Al describes one incident just before the Maghrib call to prayer. He raised his hands slightly. A guard accused him of communicating with the prisoner beside him. He denied it. The punishment came anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Collective punishment and police dogs<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n When guards spotted a prisoner performing prayer movements, they called in suppression units to punish the entire section. Police dogs were brought in. Stun grenades were thrown among the prisoners. Those caught praying were dragged out and beaten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From six in the morning until midnight, prisoners sat on their knees, blindfolded, held in a position designed to exhaust and degrade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Abd al-Al describes the suppression squad as 25 members. They used electric shocks, slammed prisoners’ heads into the prison fence, beat them with batons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He ended his testimony with this: “I was a prisoner and I lived the suffering of prisoners. No one in the world feels what a prisoner endures unless they have gone through this extremely difficult experience. My heart breaks for the prisoners because of what they face.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Waiting for Ramadan behind bars<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Alaa al-Sarraj remembers a different kind of pain: the weight of memory. Behind bars, Ramadan existed only as recollection. Family gatherings, the rituals of preparation, the evening routines. These memories gave prisoners brief distance from their reality, but the mix of longing and grief was hard to carry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moments of hope would sometimes take hold. Prisoners imagined their release as a second birth, a reunion they had waited years to reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Worship as defiance<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Private prayer and supplication persisted. Al-Sarraj describes turning to God through whispered dua and zikr as a way to hold together mentally, to push back against the thoughts confinement breeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Organized worship was nearly impossible. Congregational prayer and Quran recitation were banned. Prisoners prayed alone, in stolen moments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Inspection patrols ran continuously. Guards came every half hour at night. Every hour during the day. No privacy. No stillness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At Negev prison, congregational prayers were occasionally held. But any prisoner who led the prayer was summoned for interrogation afterward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A record of what Ramadan looked like inside<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Both testimonies describe a Ramadan stripped of every familiar marker. Religious rituals banned. Surveillance constant. Collective punishment routine. Physical and psychological torture sustained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet prisoners held on to what they could: memories of home, hope for freedom, quiet acts of faith performed out of sight. These were the spaces of resistance left to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their accounts stand as firsthand documentation of what Palestinian prisoners endured during a month that, beyond the prison walls, is defined by mercy and peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Khadr Abd al-Al spent what he calls the worst Ramadan of his life inside Sde Teiman prison. No water for ablution. No space to pray. Any movement a guard mistook for worship brought a raid on the entire section. Abd al-Al, a journalist and former prisoner, gave testimony alongside released prisoner Alaa al-Sarraj about conditions …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[308,309,45,41,39,310,27,28,33,306,307,49],"class_list":["post-1309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-testimonies","tag-abd-al-al","tag-collective-punishment","tag-human-rights-violations","tag-international-conventions","tag-israeli-prisons","tag-police-dogs","tag-political-prisoners","tag-prison","tag-prisoners","tag-ramadan-in-occupation-prisons","tag-ramadan-in-prisons","tag-sde-teiman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1309"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1310,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309\/revisions\/1310"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}