On September 17, 2024, Israeli security forces arrested Palestinian freelance journalist Qutaiba Hamdan, who contributes to several outlets including the local news agency J-Media, at his home in Beitunia, 3 kilometers (2 miles) west of the West Bank city of Ramallah, according to news reports and the Beirut-based press freedom group SKeyes. Israel banned J-Media soon after the start of the Israel-Gaza war.
Hamdan´s father, Mohammed Hamdan, told CPJ via phone on September 17 that Israeli soldiers arrived at his son’s home at around 4 a.m., handcuffed him, and took him to an unknown location.
According to the Beirut-based regional press freedom group SKeyes, a military court at the Etzion detention center, where he is being held, ordered him into three months of administrative detention on September 24. His father told SKeyes that he had not been seen by a lawyer since his arrest. His father told CPJ he is trying to obtain the court documents.
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.
Hamdan 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 Israeli Defense Forces, Israel 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.