As thousands of Palestinian high school seniors wrap up their final exams this summer and step toward the next chapter of their academic journeys, two teenage girls from the occupied West Bank town of Tammun are confined behind the walls of Israel’s Damon Prison, their classroom seats empty and their carefully laid plans derailed by arrest over social media content. Seventeen-year-old Nada Bani Odeh was on the cusp of sitting for the tawjihi, Palestine’s rigorous national secondary school leaving exam, when Israeli forces raided her family’s home before dawn on February 12. Sixteen-year-old Ola Qutaishat, who had just finished 11th grade and was gearing up for her own final year of studies, was taken from her home in a nearly identical pre-dawn raid three months later, on May 24.
Gharam Abu Aisha, Nada’s mother, told Middle East Eye she initially assumed the soldiers who stormed her home had come for her husband, never expecting they would target her teenage daughter. “Then they asked, ‘Where is the tawjihi student?’” she recalled. Nada, who had already lost her older brother Wadie to Israeli forces months earlier, calmly complied with the soldiers’ orders, handed over her phone, and comforted her sobbing mother as she was led away. “Why are you crying? Even if I come back after a year or two, I’ll still come home and get the highest grades for you,” Nada told her mother, before turning back one last time to ask her to care for her younger sister.
Before her arrest, Nada was a quiet, high-achieving student who consistently ranked at the top of her class. She had long set her sights on acing the tawjihi, determined to fulfill the academic dream her brother never got the chance to complete. Even from behind bars, those ambitions remain her primary focus. Through lawyers and recently released prisoners, Nada sends messages home not asking about the endless delays in her court case, but about her grades, her classmates, and whether she will ever get the chance to pick up her studies where she left off. For Gharam, the daily absence of her daughter has left an irreplaceable void; the pair shared everything from long evening conversations to quiet drives after busy school days, and Gharam says she misses every part of their routine. “I’m proud of her,” she said. “I just want to hold her again.”
Ola’s story mirrors Nada’s in nearly every detail. On the night of her arrest, the 16-year-old had stayed up late studying English for an upcoming school exam, and her family went to bed expecting a completely ordinary morning. When armed soldiers woke the household, they separated family members, searched the home without explanation or a warrant, and handcuffed and blindfolded Ola in front of her distraught parents. When her father—still recovering from recent surgery—tried to intervene, soldiers pushed him back, while Ola begged them not to hurt him. Her sister clung to the teenager, pleading with the raiding party. “I kept telling them, ‘She’s only 16 years old. Why are you taking her?’” Ola’s sister recalled. “She wasn’t carrying anything. She wasn’t a threat. She was only thinking about her English exam.”
Like Nada, Ola remains in Damon Prison as her case crawls through the Israeli military court system, with every scheduled hearing ending in another delay. She faces allegations of incitement over social media posts, but no formal verdict has ever been issued. Her father told Middle East Eye that even the presiding military judge has questioned prosecutors over the lack of progress in the case, asking, “Why have you brought this girl here? Why isn’t the case ready?” Before her arrest, Ola dreamed of becoming a journalist, determined to give a voice to silenced Palestinians and share the reality of life under occupation with the world. That dream is now on indefinite hold.
Current data from the Israel Prison Service shows that as of late December, 351 Palestinian minors were being held in Israeli detention on so-called “security” grounds, with an additional 106 detained for illegal entry into Israel. Nada and Ola, two of the youngest female Palestinian prisoners in detention, are being held together in a separate section of Damon Prison, isolated from the adult prison population and confined to a small cell under constant surveillance. According to Palestinian lawyer Hasan Abadi, conditions inside the facility have deteriorated drastically since October 7, 2023, amounting to a systematic campaign of abuse against detainees. “Damon Prison has become a living grave for prisoners,” Abadi said. Cells lack adequate ventilation, food is nutritionally poor, medical care for sick prisoners is nonexistent, and basic supplies like clothing and cleaning products are unavailable. The facility is severely overcrowded: eight women are often forced to share a cell built for four, leaving half the population to sleep on the cold floor. For Nada and Ola, conditions are even harsher: held in complete isolation, the teenagers have no access to basic sanitary supplies even during menstrual periods, and have no privacy from constant surveillance.
“What is happening in Damon Prison is not merely a series of isolated violations, but a systematic regime of oppression, starvation, and humiliation aimed at breaking Palestinian women physically and psychologically,” Abadi explained. “With every testimony, it becomes increasingly clear that the prison is no longer just a place of detention, but an instrument of slow death carried out in cold blood. Despite all this suffering, the female prisoners continue to resist, holding on to the Quran, their stories, and their memories as a final shield protecting their humanity.”
Even amid the harsh conditions and uncertain legal processes, both teenage girls have retained their determination to return to their education. Nada continues to reassure her mother in every message that she will come home, finish her studies, and make her family proud—a promise that has kept both mother and daughter holding out hope for a return to the future they once planned.