Palestinian Families Describe Years-Long Detention of Teenage Children in Israeli Prisons

Every morning, Fidaa Zalabani straightens the clothes in her son Mohammed's room in the Shu'fat refugee camp in occupied East Jerusalem. He has not slept there in more than three years.

Mohammed was 13 when Israeli forces arrested him in February 2023, two weeks after he watched a teenage friend killed by an Israeli soldier. He was accused of stabbing a soldier on a bus at a Shu'fat checkpoint. During the incident a security guard opened fire and accidentally shot the wounded soldier, who later died. Mohammed was sentenced to 18 years in prison and held responsible for the death. He is now 17, held at Megiddo Prison in northern Israel.

For roughly two years, his mother says, she has not been permitted to visit him.

"The lawyer told us during several visits that the child detainees there go to sleep hungry most days; the guards allow no more than four loaves of bread for 13 prisoners," Fidaa Zalabani told Al Jazeera.

That account of food restriction lines up, in part, with an independent finding: in September 2025 Israel's Supreme Court ruled that the Israeli Prison Service had failed to provide Palestinian prisoners with adequate food. The prison service, overseen by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, has denied allegations of starvation.

Fidaa Zalabani also said Megiddo Prison only recently began allowing child detainees to bathe more than once a week, after denying it for more than two years, and that scabies and other skin diseases spread amid overcrowding. She said she remains most worried about cell raids, beatings, and prolonged restraint of children, allegations Al Jazeera reports but that Occupation Watch has not independently verified.

A midnight arrest in Tammun

Ola Qatishat, 16, was talking with her sister Asia past midnight on May 24 about plans to celebrate Asia's high school exam results. Israeli soldiers raided their home in Tammun, in the northern West Bank, and arrested Ola on an incitement accusation. The family says they have received no further details of the charge.

"We chased after the military vehicle as they hauled her away, screaming, 'She's just a child! What are you doing?' They threw a sound grenade at my mother and me to force us back," Asia Qatishat told Al Jazeera.

Ola is held at Damon Prison. Her lawyer told the family she has developed scabies from infrequent bathing, and that a prison officer allows female detainees five minutes to bathe before threatening to drag them out. Weeks after her arrest, Ola learned through her lawyer that a mural she had entered in a school competition had won first place across the West Bank. She is awaiting a court hearing in October.

Palestinian prisoner advocacy groups, without citing a specific organization or methodology in the source reporting, estimate roughly 1,900 Palestinian children have been arrested in the West Bank since October 2023, and that about 360 remain detained. Lubna Tuma, a lawyer with the Adalah Legal Center, said children are led blindfolded to meetings with counsel and given only bare minimum provisions, describing it as policy rather than isolated incident.

These broader figures come from advocacy sources without independent verification cited in the reporting. The two named cases, corroborated by direct family testimony, specific dates, and named facilities, form the documented core of the account.