On 29 October 2024, Samah Hijjawi, a Palestinian prisoner liberated by the resistance in the November 2023 exchanges, was again ordered to 6 months imprisonment without charge or trial under Zionist "administrative detention." Samah was re-arrested by occupation forces that invaded her home on 7 October 2024.
At the time of her liberation, Samah was also held under administrative detention without charge or trial. There are currently approximately 3,500 Palestinians jailed under administrative detention out of over 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners, not counting Palestinians kidnapped from Gaza. Administrative detention orders — first introduced to Palestine by the British colonial mandate and then adopted by the Zionist regime — are indefinitely renewable, and Palestinians spend years at a time jailed with no evidence, no charges and no trial.
Samah was previously arrested on 17 May 2023 after being summoned for an interrogation with the occupation intelligence and an administrative detention order was issued against her for a period of 4 months. Just days before, on 11 May 2023, she had been summoned by the Palestinian Authority intelligence, which engages in “security coordination” with the occupation, for an interrogation about her social media posts.
Multiple Palestinian women liberated in the exchange have been re-arrested, including Hanan Barghouthi, Walaa Tanja, Dania Hanatsheh, Haneen Masaed, Aseel Samih Khader, and Yasmeen Shaaban (who was released hours later), while Nofouth Hammad was summoned for interrogation, and in the most recent attack, Fadwa Hamadeh was ordered to 2 years in prison over an incident where she defended a fellow prisoner from a jailer in 2020. All of these re-arrests come in direct violation of the prisoner exchange agreement.
Free Samah Hijjawi and all Palestinian prisoners!