On November 12, 2023, Israeli security forces arrested Palestinian journalist Momen al-Halabi, new media editor at the pro-Islamic Jihad Al-Quds Radio, at a checkpoint near Gaza City’s Kuwait roundabout as he was trying to flee south, according to the Beirut-based press freedom group SKeyes and Al-Halabi’s wife, Safaa al-Jaabari, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.
Al-Jaabari told CPJ that the family had been forced to leave Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood for southern Gaza on October 14, but Al-Halabi stayed behind to report on the war.
“He hadn’t seen us for a month so he decided to flee as well. And it didn’t occur to us that he might be arrested because he is a journalist and has nothing to do with military work. But unfortunately, he was arrested,” she said.
Al-Jabaari said that a human rights lawyer told her that the journalist had initially been held in Israel’s Sde Teiman and Petah Tikva detention centers and the West Bank’s Ofer prison. Since March, he has been in southern Israel’s Nafha prison, 62 miles south of Beersheba, under the Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law, which allows authorities to extend detention indefinitely or until a ceasefire is reached, she was told. 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 journalist has not been charged with any crime.
Safaa al-Jaabari added that her husband, who suffers from varicose veins, had been tortured in all those detention centers, according to the lawyer.
Al-Jaabari also told CPJ that Israeli airstrikes destroyed their family home in Gaza City in December, killing Al-Halabi's father and brother.
Raed Obeid, director of Al-Quds Radio, told CPJ via messaging app that Al-Halabi had worked for the station since 2020 and remained committed to his work until it stopped broadcasting because of the siege of Gaza City in November.
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.
Al-Halabi was not included in CPJ’s December 1, 2023 prison census because the organization was not aware of his arrest 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.