Ramallah – 7th February 2026 The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) strongly condemns the arrest by Israeli occupation forces of two journalists, Thursday 5th February, in separate incidents: journalist BUSHRA AL-TAWIL (32 years old) and journalist HATEM HAMDAN (26 years old).
Israeli occupation forces arrested journalist AL-TAWIL while she was passing through the Ein Siniya checkpoint. She is currently being held at Al-Moskobiya Detention Center. Meanwhile, journalist HAMDAN suddenly went missing while traveling from Ramallah to Tulkarm, and contact with him was lost. It was later confirmed that he is being held at the Binyamin Police Station in the West Bank.
These arrests come within the context of a dangerous escalation in the targeting of Palestinian media, as the occupation continues to pursue, arrest, and obstruct journalists from carrying out their professional duties. This reflects a clear attempt to silence the Palestinian media voice and prevent the documentation of ongoing violations committed against the Palestinian people.
The arrest of journalists AL-TAWIL and HAMDAN is not an isolated incident, but rather part of a systematic pattern of deliberate Israeli targeting of Palestinian journalists. During 2025 alone, Israeli occupation forces arrested 28 (Twenty-Eight) journalists and 88 (Eighty-Eight) journalists were killed, marking one of the worst periods faced by Palestinian media.
MADA affirms that the arrest of journalists AL-TAWIL and HAMDAN during their normal movement, without any clear legal justification, constitutes an assault on press freedom and fundamental human rights, and represents a blatant violation of international humanitarian law.
MADA demands the immediate and unconditional release of journalists BUSHRA AL-TAWIL and HATEM HAMDAN, and calls on the international community and the United Nations Security Council to exert pressure on Israel to stop targeting journalists and to hold it accountable for its ongoing violations.
The MADA Center expresses its full solidarity with colleagues BUSHRA AL-TAWIL and HATEM HAMDAN, with their families, and with all journalists detained in Israeli prisons. MADA emphasizes that it will not cease documenting these violations and demanding accountability for those responsible, because the freedom of journalists is the freedom of society as a whole, and their arrest is an attack on the Palestinian people’s right to expression and to convey their narrative to the world.
