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A damning new joint investigation from human rights organizations Amnesty International and Alqst has uncovered a pattern of arbitrary detention, unfair trial practices, and harsh long prison sentences handed down to international visitors to Saudi Arabia – including religious pilgrims and tourist travelers – purely for peaceful expression on social media platforms. The report, released this week, documents at least nine confirmed cases of foreign nationals targeted for detention between July 2022 and late 2024, most hailing from Middle Eastern nations and Global South countries. Rights groups warn the actual total of those detained is far higher, hidden by Saudi Arabia’s lack of judicial transparency and widespread fear among victims and their families of retaliation for speaking out.

Among the most high-profile cases detailed is that of Amr Abdelfattah, a French citizen and father of three who was taken into custody in June 2024 while completing the annual Hajj pilgrimage, one of Islam’s most sacred religious obligations. Abdelfattah spent 11 months in pre-trial detention before facing trial in May 2025 on two counts: charges related to peaceful online speech, where Saudi authorities claim he “insulted” the Saudi government and expressed support for individuals previously prosecuted by the state, and a minor visa discrepancy. Rights groups note that visa irregularities of this type almost always result in only a small fine or deportation, never imprisonment. According to Abdelfattah’s wife, the entire incident stemmed from her husband falling victim to a widespread common visa scam targeting pilgrims. He has now spent two full years behind bars, where his family says he has endured repeated physical abuse at the hands of prison guards. Alqst’s investigation confirmed credible reports that Abdelfattah has been beaten by correctional officers. Like other detained foreign nationals, he faces severe restrictions on communication with his family: any discussion of his treatment, trial conditions or legal situation results in an immediate cut-off of phone calls, and he is banned from speaking French during calls – he is only permitted to communicate in Arabic, allowing full monitoring by prison authorities. “Instead of being fined and deported, he has spent two years in detention, where he has endured repeated abuse and faces additional charges over peaceful expression,” Abdelfattah’s wife told Middle East Eye. “It’s time for this ordeal to end and for our family to be reunited.”

A second prominent case in the report involves Ahmed al-Doush, a British national who was working for Bank of America at the time of his arrest. Doush was taken into custody in August 2024 at Riyadh’s international airport as he prepared to board a flight back to the United Kingdom, after completing a family trip to Saudi Arabia with his then-pregnant wife and three young children. His detention stems from social media posts he published years before he even traveled to the kingdom. Notably, Doush had no prior history of political activism, prior reporting from Middle East Eye confirms. Since his arrest, he has been sentenced to five years in prison. His wife Amaher Nour was forced to give birth to the couple’s fourth child without any contact with her husband, just over a week before the report’s release. “Ahmed was taken from me and the children without warning or explanation. His absence has been deeply distressing to me and my children,” Nour said. “Our fourth child arrived only about a week ago and Ahmed wasn’t able to be there, I couldn’t even speak to him on the phone. My children and I just want him home as soon as possible, and seek the active support and help of the UK government to protect his rights.”

Doush’s family has faced the same lack of transparency and communication restrictions that mark other cases. Despite repeated formal requests, Saudi authorities have refused to share court documents with Doush’s legal team in the UK or his family. Doush has told his wife that he is only permitted to discuss superficial family matters during calls; any conversation about his detention conditions, health, legal proceedings or the charges against him will result in the call being terminated and additional punishment. Most recently, the report confirms, Doush was denied all contact with his family after he spoke to his children in English during a supervised call.

Other cases profiled in the investigation illustrate how widespread this targeting is across different types of visitors. Four of the nine documented detainees were in Saudi Arabia to complete the Hajj or Umrah pilgrimages – the two most important religious journeys in Islam – while the other five were on family tourist or personal visits. Fahd Ramadhan, a Dutch-Yemeni national, was detained arbitrarily in November 2023 and held for 18 months without ever being formally charged. Ramadhan believes his detention was triggered by social media posts expressing sympathy for a known critic of the Saudi royal family; interrogators presented him with a document listing four X (formerly Twitter) posts he had made and demanded he sign it. He was ultimately released in June 2025. One unnamed pilgrim was arrested in Mecca just hours after posting mild criticism of Saudi authorities on social media while performing Umrah; he was held without trial for 20 months before being released, even though he deleted the posts immediately after publishing them. Another visitor was detained and held for a full year before release after holding up a small sign during Umrah calling for the release of a political prisoner held in another country. In 2022, Lebanese national Haidar Slim was detained during Hajj after filming himself chanting a traditional Shia religious slogan; he was sentenced to five years in prison and a 10,000 Saudi riyal fine, only released in March 2025 after diplomatic intervention from his home government.

The report also highlights a common exploitative practice: many detainees who do not speak Arabic have been forced to sign legal documents they cannot understand, with no translation provided, to secure coerced confessions. Nadyeen Abdulaziz, a senior representative of Alqst, called on foreign governments to step up action to protect their citizens. “Foreign governments should use the means available to them to protect the rights of their citizens and residents while abroad, including providing consular assistance and monitoring trial proceedings,” Abdulaziz said. “Governments that profess to believe in universal human rights should advocate for the release of all those arbitrarily detained for exercising their right to freedom of expression.” Middle East Eye has reached out to the Saudi embassy in London requesting comment on the report’s findings, as of publication no response has been received.

In a stark and unprecedented admission to Israeli right-wing outlet Channel 14 on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel’s ongoing military campaigns across the Middle East will have no end, rejecting any prospect of a conclusion to the country’s regional conflicts. The lengthy interview, conducted with a media outlet widely viewed as a platform for Netanyahu’s political messaging, came in response to a question asking whether Israel’s multiple wars across the region were moving toward a close.

Netanyahu pointed to what he framed as major Israeli achievements to date, including the targeted assassinations of senior Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, and Israel’s ongoing military occupation of swathes of Gaza, southern Lebanon and Syrian territory. He also referenced the two military campaigns launched by Israel and the United States targeting Iranian-linked forces, claiming that “we broke the barrier of fear” that he said had prevented Israeli attacks on Iran for 47 years.

Pressed on whether his self-coined goal of “total victory” — announced immediately after the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack — remained within reach, Netanyahu doubled down on his indefinite conflict framing, stating simply, “it never ends.” He argued that military strength is a prerequisite for security in the Middle East and globally, asserting that “Israel is stronger than ever” before prompting applause from the studio audience, which complied with his request.

When questioned about the prospect of what the interviewer called “emigration” for Gaza’s Palestinian population, Netanyahu corrected the framing to specify what he called “voluntary emigration” — a widely criticized Israeli euphemism for the forced expulsion of Palestinians from the besieged enclave. He declined to elaborate further, saying only, “I prefer to talk less and do more.” He used the same vague, action-over-words framing when asked about proposals to establish new Jewish settlements in occupied Gaza, noting that Israel faces mounting international pressure over its policies, and “I don’t have to challenge the entire world at every moment and on every issue.”

Separate reporting from Israeli outlet Haaretz has shed new light on shifting social attitudes within Israel amid the ongoing Gaza conflict, revealing that a growing share of young Israeli students hold overtly racist views toward Palestinian citizens of the country, with upcoming student elections this October marking the first national student vote since the start of the Gaza war. The outlet cites growing concern from youth workers and academic researchers, who have documented a steady rise in extremist and exclusionary attitudes among Israeli teenagers over recent years.

Data from a poll conducted by Israel’s own education ministry shows a sharp increase between 2023 and 2025 in the share of students who believe groups including Palestinian citizens of Israel do not deserve equal membership in Israeli society. The poll breaks down attitudes by school type: 52 percent of students from religious Israeli Jewish schools back the exclusionary view, compared to 35 percent of students from secular Jewish schools and 34 percent of students from Arab-speaking Israeli schools.

A youth movement official told Haaretz that for Jewish Israeli students, rising nationalist sentiment has been paired with growing demands for a more rigid Jewish identity, alongside increased willingness to enlist in Israeli combat units. Another youth organizer noted that rising fear of Arab communities among Jewish students has been accompanied by a broader erosion of trust in Israel’s own democratic institutions. Beyond the rise in exclusionary views, the report found that most recent graduates of Israel’s secular education system no longer believe a lasting peace agreement with Palestinians is possible. One Jewish high school principal summarized the shift, telling Haaretz that today’s graduates “do not believe in peace or in a political solution to the conflict between the two peoples.”

In another alarming development, Israeli news outlet Ynet reported Wednesday on a new academic study that warns of devastating, long-term mental health harms facing the children of Israeli reserve soldiers, whose deployments to multiple ongoing fronts have stretched on for nearly two years. The study, conducted by researchers at Reichman University, surveyed more than 2,500 reservist families to measure trauma rates across generations.

The findings are stark: an overwhelming majority of young children under the age of seven whose parent is a reservist show measurable symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Seventy-five percent of these children meet the threshold for sub-clinical PTSD, while nearly 32 percent of symptomatic children meet criteria for full clinical PTSD. Researchers warned that the emotional and physiological harm being experienced by these children will create long-term costs for Israeli society if widespread, accessible treatment is not rolled out immediately.

The trauma is not limited to children: the study found that 35 percent of surveyed reserve fathers and 42 percent of reserve mothers also show symptoms of PTSD and other trauma-related conditions. After almost two years of continuous combat across multiple fronts, the study concludes that Israel has effectively become “a nation in trauma,” with reservist families raising young children bearing an especially severe and ongoing burden. Researchers described daily life for many of these families as “at times, utter chaos,” warning that the country is now facing an unprecedented “tsunami of mental health problems.”

Common symptoms reported in children include insomnia, bedwetting, frequent violent outbursts, and other behavioral disruptions, while 80 percent of parents reported a major, widespread decline across all areas of their daily lives, researchers confirmed.

Overnight raids carried out by the Israeli army across the occupied West Bank early Wednesday led to the arrest of five female Palestinian activists all affiliated with local Palestinian health committees, alongside 15 additional Palestinian detainees. The arrests mark a sharp escalation in ongoing targeting of Palestinian women and healthcare workers under occupation, according to local Palestinian advocacy groups. The five detained women come from three major West Bank governorates: Ramallah-based activists Jamila Abu Dahou and Jamila Kanaan, two Nablus natives — previously released detainee Maysar al-Faqih and 26-year-old accountant Faten Hanaysheh — and 66-year-old Etaf Bader from Hebron. All five have ties to the Health Work Committees, a leading Palestinian health and community development organization. Family members of the detainees have detailed the chaotic and aggressive nature of the pre-dawn raids, which left children traumatized and violated basic cultural norms for several of the arrested women. Etaf Bader, a 20-year veteran of the Health Work Committees’ administrative board who has spent decades leading family support and women’s empowerment initiatives, was taken from her family home in Hebron. Her husband Abdul Rahman Bader recounted to Middle East Eye that Israeli soldiers forced their way into the property, demanded his wife’s identification, and took her into custody without disclosing any charges. Soldiers handcuffed and blindfolded Bader, searched the home’s rooms and storage, and transported her to an undisclosed location. “We don’t know where she was taken, and we hope the arrest is temporary and for questioning only,” Abdul Rahman Bader said. In Nablus, 61-year-old Maysar al-Faqih — who had already spent four months in Israeli administrative detention two years earlier and stepped back from women’s rights activism after her release to avoid re-arrest — was seized during a 2:30 a.m. raid on her family home. Al-Faqih’s three married daughters were visiting with their children at the time, and the young kids were roused from sleep by the soldiers’ shouting and aggressive entry into the home. Wael Abu al-Saba, Maysar’s husband, told reporters that Israeli forces acted brutally during the incursion, frightening the children, seized al-Faqih’s mobile phone, and took her into custody after restraining her. The most high-profile incident of cultural disrespect during the raids was documented in the arrest of Faten Hanaysheh, the 26-year-old accountant with the Health Work Committees. Israeli forces first searched for Hanaysheh at her brother’s home in the village of Beit Dajan, east of Nablus, before surrounding her father’s home in the village center and pounding violently on the entry door. When the family opened the door, soldiers immediately announced they intended to arrest Hanaysheh, who was wearing only pajamas. Hanaysheh’s father Murad told reporters he begged soldiers to allow his daughter time to change into street clothes, a request that aligns with basic Islamic cultural norms for modesty. Soldiers refused his request, pushed him back repeatedly, slammed the home door shut, and dragged Hanaysheh away in handcuffs to an undisclosed location. Hours after her arrest, Hanaysheh was able to contact her family to confirm she was being held at the Salem Detention Centre and would face interrogation by Israeli intelligence. Murad Hanaysheh also added that Israeli forces had raided his daughter’s office at the Health Work Committees Nablus headquarters just two weeks prior, seizing work-related documents and her work laptop. In a formal statement following the arrests, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club outlined that Palestinian women have faced a steadily rising tide of targeting as part of Israel’s broad arrest campaigns across the West Bank. Tactics used against detained women include night home raids, hostage detention, aggressive interrogation methods, and growing numbers of arrests based on Israeli allegations of “incitement” on social media platforms. Following Wednesday’s arrests, the total number of Palestinian women held in Israeli detention facilities now stands at 99, the organization confirmed. The statement also added that daily Israeli arrest raids across the West Bank are part of a deliberate, systemic state policy. Since the outbreak of the 2023 Israel-Hamas war, the total number of Palestinians arrested by Israeli forces in the occupied territories has surpassed 24,000. The arrests of the five female health activists come on the heels of two recent high-profile detentions of senior Palestinian medical workers: 71-year-old Dr. Mazen al-Rantisi, arrested during a home raid in Ramallah last week, and 63-year-old Dr. Khaled Ayash, taken into custody days later from his home in Biddu, a town northwest of Jerusalem. The Palestinian NGO Network has condemned this string of arrests, framing them as a deliberate attack on core Palestinian civil society and health infrastructure. In a formal statement, the network called on the international community to ramp up pressure on the Israeli occupation to end the targeting of Palestinian doctors, health workers and humanitarian organizations. The group also demanded the activation of international accountability mechanisms to secure the release of all detained Palestinian health personnel. The network emphasized that these arrests constitute a clear violation of international humanitarian law, and represent an expansion of the occupation’s long-running campaign to dismantle Palestinian health systems across both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Amid the ongoing war in Gaza, widespread destruction of health infrastructure, and state-led policies of forced displacement, these arrests further block Palestinian civilians from accessing life-saving medical care, the statement added.

A groundbreaking 188-page report from the Palestinian Feminist Collective, backed by the global advocacy group Progressive International, has leveled explosive allegations that Israel has enacted decades of systemic reproductive genocide against the Palestinian people, a campaign that has intensified to catastrophic levels since the outbreak of full-scale conflict in Gaza in October 2023. The report argues that this deliberate strategy targets Palestinian women, children, and communal life by destroying critical medical infrastructure, causing widespread environmental harm that triggers infertility, and directly killing civilians to erode the possibility of sustained Palestinian existence. The findings align with a separate recent conclusion from the United Nations’ top independent investigative body for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which confirmed Israeli forces have intentionally targeted Palestinian children as a core component of their Gaza military campaign.

The UN commission’s investigation mapped the full scope of harm inflicted on Palestinian children: from targeted sniper attacks and drone strikes, to systematic torture of detained minors, widespread reproductive violence, and the deliberate leveling of schools and hospitals. Since the start of the campaign in October 2023, more than 21,000 Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli forces, with an additional 5,160 children estimated to remain trapped and dead under the rubble of destroyed buildings. As of October 2024, at least 15,000 children in Gaza have lost their mothers, leaving them orphaned in a war zone. One particularly devastating case documented by the UN involved the Israeli military cutting power to al-Nasr paediatric hospital, leading to the deaths of four newborn infants. Their decomposing bodies were later found still connected to non-functional life support machines.

When the full-scale assault on Gaza began, UN officials estimated 50,000 pregnant women were residing in the enclave, with 5,500 births occurring each month. The report details that Israel’s military blockade and attacks have eliminated almost all access to emergency obstetric care, creating a public health catastrophe that has pushed miscarriage rates up by more than 300 percent. Widespread malnutrition, widespread anaemia, and a total lack of prenatal supplements have drastically increased the risks of preterm birth, low birth weight, and fatal maternal hemorrhaging during labor. With Israel blocking entry of clean water, menstrual hygiene products, and basic reproductive health supplies into Gaza, the Palestinian Feminist Collective found that many women have been forced to use homemade sanitary pads or take continuous birth control pills to stop their periods entirely.

Compiled from research conducted between December 2025 and April 2026, the report draws from a vast array of sources: survivor and witness testimonies, declassified Israeli archival documents, Palestinian oral histories, peer-reviewed academic research, documentary evidence, independent media reporting, human rights documentation, and official UN reports and statements. In Gaza, the vast majority of hospitals have been destroyed or damaged by bombing, leaving facilities without fuel, electricity, anesthesia, or sterile surgical equipment. This has forced pregnant women to deliver babies in overcrowded emergency shelters, damaged private homes, or even on rubble-strewn city streets. International medics who have worked in Gaza have described the unspeakable horror of performing major surgeries, including emergency Caesarean sections, without any form of anesthesia. Even after giving birth, new mothers cannot access basic supplies considered universal across most of the world: diapers, adequate nutrition, clean water, or infant formula.

The report argues that Israel’s military campaign has systematically targeted the core infrastructure that enables Palestinian life, specifically reproductive healthcare systems, to make sustained Palestinian survival impossible. Israeli forces have destroyed maternity wards and in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics across Gaza. The report adds that the Israeli military’s use of toxic weaponry including white phosphorus has created long-term, intergenerational risks to Palestinian fertility, extending the harm of the campaign to future generations. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian women now serve as the sole breadwinners and caregivers for their families, after being widowed by the conflict or left to raise children alone while their partners are held in Israeli political prisons. Thousands more have been forcibly separated from their families through systematic expulsions and mass incarcerations. “Palestinian mothers in Gaza have been left to shoulder the impossible task of giving life and caring for their children despite the widespread starvation, displacement, and disease,” the report states.

To illustrate the systemic nature of the violence, the report highlights the stories of two Gaza women, Rania Abu Anza and Jomana Arafa, whose cases are described as only the tip of the iceberg of harm. Abu Anza spent 10 years pursuing IVF treatment before finally giving birth to twin boys, Naeim and Wissam. In March 2024, an Israeli air strike killed both infants and their father, destroying the family Abu Anza had spent a decade building. Just two days after Arafa gave birth to her own twins, she, her newborns, and her mother were killed while seeking shelter in an area Israel had officially designated a “safe humanitarian zone.” Arafa’s husband survived only because he had left to retrieve the twins’ official birth certificates.

The UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory has independently confirmed that Israeli forces have systematically targeted reproductive healthcare infrastructure, all but eliminating maternity services, prenatal care, fertility clinics, and neonatal intensive care units across Gaza. For the first time in Gaza’s history, a full-scale famine has broken out in the enclave, driven by Israel’s severe restrictions on food entry. The Palestinian Feminist Collective’s report also traces this reproductive violence to long-standing ideological roots in Israeli policy, noting that as early as 1995, Israeli geographer Arnon Soffer warned that “the most serious threat Israel faces is the wombs of Arab women,” framing Palestinian birth rates as an existential threat to Israeli national security. Golda Meir, who served as Israeli prime minister from 1969 to 1974, once remarked that her worst nightmares stemmed from the knowledge that “another Palestinian child will be born.”

Responding to the report, Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, called the document a damning indictment of the entire system of Israeli occupation. “It is an indictment of a system that has transformed Palestinian life – bodies, homes, families, reproductive existence, and even the dead – into instruments of control and domination,” Albanese said. “It is time to understand that the crimes against the Palestinians – including the sexualised and gender-based violence meticulously researched and exposed in this report – is not a total sum of isolated abuses, but a system of domination, oppression and erasure.” This reporting is originally from independent outlet Middle East Eye, which provides unfiltered coverage of the Middle East and North Africa region.

A controversial proposal to establish so-called “Hamas-free humanitarian zones” in the Gaza Strip, led by a U.S.-backed initiative led by former U.S. President Donald Trump, has emerged in recent Israeli media reports, as the Israeli military continues to consolidate its hold over more than two-thirds of the besieged territory.

According to reporting from Israeli national newspaper Israel Hayom, the first of these controlled humanitarian zones is scheduled to open within the next several weeks at Tel Sultan, a location situated on the outskirts of Rafah in southern Gaza. The site is intended to house Palestinian civilians who have been vetted and confirmed to have no weapon holdings or organizational ties to Hamas, the report says.

Security and order within the designated zones will be maintained by a newly assembled multinational contingent called the International Stabilisation Force (ISF). The force will be outfitted exclusively with non-lethal weaponry, operating out of Israel’s Amitai Camp located near the Gaza border and falling under the direct command of Trump’s Board of Peace – the body launched in January this year at the former U.S. president’s explicit order to advance a negotiated settlement for the Gaza conflict.

While the plan promises basic humanitarian support including temporary shelter and aid deliveries to residents of the zones, Board of Peace officials have made a firm commitment to ban the import of concrete into Gaza, a restriction that will heavily limit infrastructure reconstruction amid widespread destruction across the territory. The board is also moving forward with plans to develop large-scale logistics warehouses to support the management of the humanitarian shelters, with site scouting already underway in communities adjacent to Gaza’s border fence, per the report.

Parallel to these humanitarian planning efforts, the Israeli military is continuing its incremental expansion of territorial control beyond the so-called “Yellow Line”, an existing boundary that was meant to serve as a temporary holding area for Israeli forces during the first phase of an earlier ceasefire agreement. Under the terms of that deal, Israel was required to withdraw from the area during the second phase of the agreement, but Israel has refused to relinquish control, as the second phase has never been implemented. Today, this expanded buffer zone controlled by Israel encompasses approximately 70 percent of Gaza’s total land area.

An unnamed senior Israeli official speaking to Israel Hayom outlined the country’s current strategic approach: “We are manoeuvring within the American constraints, increasing the pace of targeted killings while remaining below the threshold of international criticism – and this will continue as long as Hamas is unwilling to disarm.”

In a recent public update posted to the social platform X, the Board of Peace confirmed that the first batch of tactical vehicles has already arrived at the ISF’s base in the Logistics Support Area codenamed Endurance, alongside photographs documenting the delivery.

Reaction to the plan from Hamas has been cautiously measured. Hazem Qassem, a spokesperson for the group, said Hamas holds out hope that the initiative will mark “the beginning of implementing the tasks assigned to them”, including separating Palestinian communities in Gaza from Israeli military forces and working to put a stop to ongoing Israeli violations against Palestinian civilians. “We call on the Board of Peace to begin the actual implementation of the provisions of the plan to end the war on Gaza,” Qassem added.

The plan for a concentrated humanitarian enclave near Rafah is not a new proposal. As far back as July of last year, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz first announced plans to corral the entire population of Gaza into a consolidated “humanitarian city” near Rafah, where all residents would undergo mandatory security screenings and be barred from leaving the designated area. Earlier satellite imagery analysis conducted by research group Forensic Architecture and reported by Drop Site News in January of this year already revealed that Israeli forces had carried out large-scale land clearing and ground compaction work in the Tel Sultan area of Rafah, a level of preparatory construction activity unmatched anywhere else east of the Yellow Line.