On March 18, 2024, Israel Defense Forces launched an offensive on Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital complex, arresting scores of Palestinians, including reporter Khader Abdel Aal of the Gaza-based local newspaper Felesteen and his brother, reporter Ahmed Abdel Aal of the pro-Hamas Shehab News Agency, according to the Beirut-based regional press freedom group SKeyes. Other journalists were also arrested in the raid.
“The Israeli security forces arrested Khader and Ahmed at the Al-Shifa Hospital, but we only have information about Khader, who was transferred to the Sde Teiman detention center and then to Ofer prison on August 4,” Majida Karajah, a lawyer with the Palestinian prisoner support group Addameer told CPJ via messaging app.
She said Khader was accused of joining a terrorist organization under the Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law, which allows authorities to extend detention indefinitely or until a ceasefire is reached. 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. B’Tselem described overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, and abuse at Israeli prison facilities housing Palestinian journalists.
The Palestinian prisoner support group Addameer visited Khader at Ofer prison in the West Bank on September 26 and Palestinian Commission of Detainee Affairs visited him on October 28. Addameer told CPJ that Israeli authorities had interrogated him twice and held two trial sessions. Addameer also said that Khader said that Israeli guards at Ofer Prison physically and psychologically tortured him and the other detainees, including by directing them to cheer for an official designated as the “captain” and then assaulting whomever did not comply, as well as by forcing detainees to kneel or lie on their stomachs for six or seven hours at a time on days when they received visits from their lawyers. Khader also said that prison guards were beating them less frequently than before and had also removed their handcuffs.
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 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.