On March 2, 2024, Israeli security forces arrested Rami Abu Zubaida, editor-in-chief of the Palestinian news website 180 Investigations and a military analyst for numerous outlets, along with his brother Ibrahim at a checkpoint in the Hamad Towers area in southern Gaza’s city of Khan Yunis, according to Abu Zubaida’s employer and the Beirut-based regional press freedom group SKeyes.
Abu Zubaida’s brother Khaled was cited by SKeyes as saying that Israeli troops surrounded Hamad Towers and, via a drone, called on residents to leave the area through a safe corridor amid heavy gunfire and shelling.
“My brother Rami and other residents were surprised that a checkpoint had been set up for those displaced. As he approached the checkpoint, Israeli soldiers arrested him, blindfolded him and my other brother Ibrahim, and took them to an unknown destination,” Khaled told SKeyes.
In June, Khaled told CPJ via messaging app and email that after receiving no news about his brother for more than 110 days, he learned that he had been held in Sde Teiman, a detention center in southern Israel. Later that month, Khaled told CPJ that a lawyer had told him that Abu Zubaida had been moved to the West Bank’s Ofer prison.
In September, Khaled told CPJ that Abu Zubaida’s lawyer had been unable to visit him in Ofer prison since June 30 as repeated requests had gone unanswered.
Lawyer Jenan Abdo of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel rights group told CPJ that it had filed a complaint against Israeli authorities for mistreatment, torture, and denial of medical treatment to Abu Zubaida, who suffers from back problems.
Khaled told CPJ that Abu Zubaida’s lawyer was allowed to visit him on October 27 and found that Abu Zubaida was in good spirits, but that authorities can act repressively toward the prisoners depending on what is happening in the course of the war.
CPJ was unable to determine whether the journalist faces charges in custody.
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
Abu Zubaida has written for the news website ArabicPost, the Qatari-funded broadcaster Al-Jazeera, and pan-Arab newspaper Al-Araby al-Jadeed, and provided commentary on Israeli-Palestinian news for the Istanbul-based broadcaster Al-Rafidain TV.
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.