On November 16, 2023, Israeli security forces arrested Palestinian freelance journalist Hamza Radwan, who works for Gaza’s nonprofit Youth Media Center, at the Netzarim checkpoint in Gaza City as he was trying to flee south, according to the Beirut-based regional press freedom organization SKeyes and Radwan’s father, Akram Radwan.
In September 2024, Radwan’s father told CPJ via messaging app that, after months without news, a prisoner who was freed from Ktzi’ot prison in southern Israel’s Negev desert in late May told him that Radwan was being held there, after previously being held in Ofer prison in the West Bank and in Nafha prison in southern Israel.
Radwan’s father told CPJ that the prisoner who was freed said that the journalist was seen with a burn on his hand in prison and had lost a lot of weight.
Alaa Skafi, director of Palestinian prisoner support group Addameer, told CPJ that journalists from Gaza are generally held under the Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law. According to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, the law allows Israel to hold detainees for long periods of time without charge and with limited access to legal counsel. Skafi and B’Tselem both described overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, and abuse at Israeli prison facilities housing Palestinian journalists.
Israel's military operations in Gaza and Lebanon, which began after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, have devastated the local press. Israel has killed scores of journalists in Gaza as well as six in Lebanon, jailed dozens of Palestinian journalists from Gaza and the West Bank, and destroyed much of the press infrastructure in Gaza, all while preventing the foreign press from entering Gaza.
CPJ did not include Radwan in its 2023 prison census, which tallies the number of journalists in prison on December 1, because it was unaware of his case at the time.
CPJ emailed the Israel Defense Forces, Israel’s Security Agency, also known as Shin Bet, and the Israeli Prison Service in late 2024 for comment on the cases of imprisoned Palestinian journalists but received no response.