Nora Barrows-Friedman

“I was released today after about four and a half months of detention.” Dr. Mazen al-Rantisi, a 71-year-old physician from Ramallah known across the West Bank as “the doctor of the poor,” speaks with a fresh wound on his face, inflicted half an hour before his release on October 25, 2026. He says a jailer dragged him to the release room handcuffed behind his back, shackled at the legs and blindfolded, then shoved and kicked him to the ground. Israeli occupation forces seized al-Rantisi from his home in the al-Tireh neighbourhood of Ramallah in June without announcing any reason, and his daughter says he lost around 25 kilograms in their prisons. He describes Nafha prison as overrun with scabies, affecting nearly 80 percent of the Palestinian hostages held there, with almost no medicine given. When prisoners beg the passing nurse for treatment, he says, they are cursed at, mocked and ridiculed, and he was taunted for taking the chronic medication a court had ordered he receive. He calls on international human rights organisations to intervene, saying Palestinian hostages are beaten and punished at the whim of their jailers with no oversight or accountability. @Aljazeeraquds