Five Palestinian women journalists, writers, and activists are held in Damon prison. Two of them are under administrative detention orders, with no charge and no trial. They come from Hebron, Ramallah, and Bethlehem. All five are among roughly 99 Palestinian women prisoners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The occupation has turned journalism and free expression into a ready-made charge, filed under one word: incitement. The point is to silence these women and to warn anyone else who documents the truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Prisoners’ Media Office says around 40 journalists from the West Bank and Gaza are in occupation custody. Two of the Gaza journalists are held under enforced disappearance. The five in Damon are one part of a wider policy aimed at Palestinian media and the people who work in it, and their case is one of the most painful in the prisoners’ file.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inside Damon, the journalists face what the other women face: starvation, medical neglect, and filth. The basics of daily life are withheld. Contact with the outside world has been cut off. Guards confiscated their paper and pens and took their Qurans. The prison does not supply the long skirts they need to pray, so the right to worship goes with the rest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Almost the only opening left is a limited lawyer visit. Through those visits a little of what they endure gets out: trials postponed again and again, administrative detention orders renewed again and again. Most of those orders rest on incitement, the charge the occupation reaches for whenever it wants to make reporting and opinion a crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Journalist Farah Ahmad Abu Ayyash: 55 Days at Moskobiya<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Farah Ahmad Abu Ayyash spent 55 days in the Moskobiya interrogation center. She described it to her lawyer, Hassan Abadi, as “a horror film”: a room crawling with insects, no air, no sunlight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Occupation forces arrested her on August 5, 2025, and the violations began in the first minutes. They searched her phone and cuffed her hands until they swelled. Their dogs tore at her clothes. They slammed her head into the wall and made her kiss the occupation flag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Abu Ayyash is 26, from Beit Ummar north of Hebron, and one of the longest-held women journalists in Damon. She was arrested over her journalism and charged with incitement. She had done nothing but report the truth and speak her mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From Moskobiya they moved her to Damon, where she is still held and still facing trial after trial, each one postponed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Journalist Lama Khater: Re-Arrested Months After Her Release<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Occupation forces re-arrested the writer and activist Lama Abdel-Muttalib Khater, 50, in Hebron on March 24, 2026, months after her release in the Toufan al-Ahrar prisoner exchange. On March 30 they transferred her to administrative detention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At Moskobiya they confiscated her prescription glasses. She has been in severe pain and had constant headaches ever since. Guards cursed her and subjected her to repeated crackdowns. Inside Damon the harassment has not let up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Khater is a mother of five. Her husband, the released prisoner Hazem al-Fakhouri, spent three years in occupation prisons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Journalist Bushra al-Tawil: Four Arrests, More Than Five Years<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Four arrests. More than five years in occupation prisons. Bushra Jamal al-Tawil, 32, a journalist from Ramallah, is still being held, and her journalism is what keeps drawing them back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The occupation seized her again on February 5, 2026, as she passed through a military checkpoint, not long after her release from a previous detention. Days later it placed her under a four-month administrative detention order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Journalist Natalie Abu Diya: Raided While She Studied<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Occupation forces raided Natalie Abu Diya’s home on June 2, 2026, while she was working on her university assignments. She has been held since. Abu Diya is 21, a journalist and media student from Birzeit in the Ramallah district. She plays for the Palestinian women’s national football team. Her studies and her football stopped in the same raid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The occupation authorities also arrested her teammate on the national team, Rand al-Halawani, and released her a week later. Abu Diya is still inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Journalist Islam Amarneh: Hour Waits for Her Parents<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Hour’s mother and father are both in occupation prisons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Occupation forces arrested her mother, journalist Islam Abdel-Majid Amarneh, 31, at dawn on May 3, 2026, after storming the family home in Dheisheh camp in Bethlehem. They gave her no chance to say goodbye to her daughter. Her father, Osama Hassan Hammad, 32, has been held without sentence since July 23, 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hour has been left with neither of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The occupation is not going after individuals. It is going after free speech and the Palestinian narrative. These women carried pens and cameras, nothing more, and used them to report what their people were living through. The occupation turned truth into a charge and journalism into grounds for arrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their pens once carried the stories of their people. Now they are the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Condemnations from human rights groups have changed nothing. The violations continue: torture, starvation, and medical neglect. Isolation. Trial after trial. The aim is to silence the witness and confiscate the Palestinian narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the truth is stronger than the bars, and the pens of these imprisoned journalists still bear witness to a time when the occupation set out to arrest the word before the person who wrote it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Five Palestinian women journalists, writers, and activists are held in Damon prison. Two of them are under administrative detention orders, with no charge and no trial. 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