Israeli military forces arrested Palestinian freelance journalist Ibrahim al-Zouhairy, a contributor to Al-Hadath news website, on November 18, 2023.
Soldiers broke into his family home in Burham, north of Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to al-Zouhairy’s sister, journalist Hala al-Zouhairy, and the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate.
In an interview with CPJ, Hala al-Zouhairy said that soldiers assaulted the journalist and another brother, Mohammad al-Zouhairy, a law student at Birzeit University, and arrested the pair. They also threatened to kill the family.
She said that the brothers were not informed of any charges against them and that their lawyers have no information about the reason for their arrest.
Al-Zouhairy was formerly on staff at Al-Hadath, according to editor-in-chief Rola Sirhan, and now freelances. On his personal Facebook account, Al-Zouahiry shares personal opinions, related to ongoing events in the West Bank and Gaza, and occasionally news. Less than two weeks before his arrest, he posted a video of a person who appears to be a paramedic trying to provide medical aid to an injured person while gunshots ring out and bystanders urge him to leave. A few days earlier he had written a post citing another journalist’s reporting that Iran and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah had given the United States an ultimatum to end the war in Gaza or else wage war against the so-called “Axis of Resistance,” the Iran-led anti-Western coalition.
Hala al-Zouhairy, told CPJ via messaging app in September 2024 that Ibrahim al-Zouhairy is being held in Ofer prison, in the West Bank, in administrative detention. Under administrative detention procedures, authorities may hold detainees for six months without charge if they suspect the detainee of planning to commit a future offense, and then extend the detention an unlimited number of times, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. Judges may accept evidence against the detainee without disclosing it on security grounds.
CPJ was unable to determine the status of the journalist’s health in prison.
Al-Zouhairy was arrested in the course of Israel’s recent military operations in the region, which began after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. Israel has killed scores of journalists in Gaza as well as six in Lebanon, jailed dozens of Palestinian journalists from the West Bank and Gaza, and destroyed much of the press infrastructure in Gaza, all while preventing the foreign press from entering Gaza.
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.