“Union for Justice”: The Occupation Arrested (15) Palestinian Journalists Since the Beginning of the Current Year
23/9/2026 – Union for Justice Foundation
The “Union for Justice Foundation” said that the Israeli occupation forces have arrested 15 journalists in the West Bank since the beginning of the current year, four of them during September.
The Foundation stated that the arrest of journalist Alaa Al-Rimawi from his home in the city of Ramallah on the seventeenth of this month brought the number of journalists held in the occupation’s prisons to (40), including (29) from the West Bank and (11) who have been arrested from the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023.
It noted that these figures do not include journalists arrested by the Israeli army while covering events on the ground, who are often released after several hours of detention.
The “Union for Justice” warned that the fate of three journalists from Gaza remains unknown, and it is not known whether they are alive and being held in the occupation’s prisons or were martyred during the war. They are: Ahmed Issam Al-Agha, Nidal Al-Wahidi, and Haitham Abdul Wahid.
The occupation authorities are holding two female journalists in their prisons: Nikaa Hamed from the town of Beitin, Ramallah District, who was arrested on the fifteenth of this month at one of the military checkpoints established east of Bethlehem.
Hamed, who holds American citizenship and is a mother of three children, works as a correspondent for the Iranian “Press TV” channel. During the period preceding her arrest, she was subjected to an incitement campaign by settlers and Israeli platforms, against the background of her coverage of events in the town of Qusra, south of Nablus.
Journalist Bushra Jamal Al-Tawil also remains administratively detained in the occupation’s prisons since February, as she was recently transferred from Damon Prison to solitary confinement in Ramleh Prison, and is suffering from difficult living conditions.
Since the beginning of the current year, the Israeli army has killed eight journalists in the Gaza Strip. The latest was Ahmed Samir Washah, a cameraman for Al Jazeera Mubasher, whose vehicle was bombed by an Israeli reconnaissance aircraft in June in Al-Bureij Camp in the central Gaza Strip.
Three months earlier, journalist and prisoner Marwan Fathi Harzallah (54), from the city of Nablus, was martyred in the Israeli Megiddo Prison as a result of deliberate medical neglect. He had been detained since January 8, 2026, and was still being held on charges related to what the occupation claims is “incitement.”
According to the monitoring of the “Union for Justice Foundation,” the occupation has killed (266) journalists since the beginning of the war of extermination in the Gaza Strip in October 2023, a number described as the deadliest and most dangerous for journalists in conflicts and wars in the modern era.
In the West Bank, Palestinian journalists work under difficult conditions amid continuous pursuit and monitoring by the occupation authorities, which monitor the journalist’s every move, having made “incitement” or possessing a “drone” used for filming a ready-made charge that warrants arrest and imprisonment.
Dozens of journalists have been subjected to arrest and beatings while covering violations by the occupation and settlers. Israeli checkpoints spread throughout the West Bank have also turned into points for the arrest and detention of journalists.
The Foundation emphasizes that the occupation views the Palestinian journalist as a target who must be silenced, at times through killing and at other times through imprisonment and arrest. It stresses that the occupation practices a systematic repressive policy against journalists to intimidate them, silence them, and prevent them from conveying the truth and documenting the practices of the occupation.
The “Union for Justice Foundation” calls on the occupation authorities to comply with Resolution 2222, unanimously adopted by the United Nations Security Council in 2015, concerning the protection of journalists and media-related personnel as civilians in situations of conflict.
End
