3-Month Pregnant Amina Al Taweel Speaks of Her Tough Detention in Israeli Jail

By Dr Marwan Asmar

Three-month pregnant Amin Shaher Al Taweel  was grabbed from her home by Israeli soldiers in the middle of the night.  

Her lawyer, Hassan Abadi, reveals shocking details about her condition as she is being held in the Israeli Damon Prison. He said Amina is three-month pregnant and is living in the most dire humanitarian state with no medical care.

Abadi explained that following a visit to the 36-year-old mother of four from the town of Kafr Thulth in the Qalqilya district of the northern West Bank.

The meeting was deeply moving, with Amina breaking down as she received wishes from her family; these were tears of joy at being reassured of her children and cries of sorrow at being separated from them.

Abadi said Amin’s greatest concern is for the well-being of her children and husband, noting he is “a wonderful father and husband,” and urged her lawyer to tell her daughters to take responsibility and stand by their dad, and sent a message to her mom asking for her prayers in these difficult circumstances.

Amina was arrested at dawn on 18 March, 2026, at 2:30 am, after preparing the pre-dawn meal (suhoor) for her children just two days before Eid al-Fitr.

The image of her children crying during her arrest continues to haunt her. Their pleas for her not to leave and stay with them to celebrate Eid is most difficult, she says.

Her lawyer said Amina was subjected to a harsh 25-day interrogation at the Al-Jalameh Interrogation Center held in solitary confinement in an underground cell. There, she lost 9 kilos with much psychological and physical pressure imposed on her. “The interrogation conditions were extremely harsh, things you can’t imagine,” Abadi emphasized.

Currently, Amina is being held in a cramped 4×4 meters room with six prisoners instead of two, in conditions lacking even the most basic of privacy. The bathroom inside the room has no door, exacerbating the prisoners’ suffering with the room including a minor and another pregnant woman.

Abadi that since she was brought to this prison Amina  was subjected to repeated interrogation calls by raiding prison forces. These raids – six times so far –  were accompanied by stun grenades, shouting, and verbal abuse, whilst being forced to kneel and some placed in solitary confinement for extended periods. She explained these measures are “repeated punishments.”

Abadi stressed Amina’s condition is alarming, especially since she is pregnant and suffers from seizures and blood clots. She is not receiving adequate nutrition, and needs healthy foods such as soup and green vegetables, which is not available in prison. He also noted the prison administration keeps delaying her needed pregnancy tests and won’t inform her of the results taken while her interrogations continue.

He added that the prison administration had confiscated her personal belonginngs and forced her into a prison uniform. But the other female prisoners gave her more appropriate prayer garments after altering them to fit her. This reflects the spirit of solidarity among the female prisoners despite the harsh conditions.

Abadi said Amina told him visits like this are the only source of comfort for the inmates, providing them news of their families. Through the lawyer, she also sent a message to her children, urging them to write in their diaries, send her letters, and keep a record of their daily lives in the hope of seeing them again.

In turn, Abadi promised he would launch an international campaign through the European Alliance for the Support of Palestinian Prisoners demanding her release, especially since she is pregnant.

The number of Palestinian women in Israeli jails has risen to 90 as of April 2026 according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Association. It states most of them are in the Damon Prison; they include two young girls and a pregnant woman in her third month.

This article is based on a report on the Falastine  Al Ann website and appears in www.crossfirearabia.com

CrossFireArabia

CrossFireArabia

Dr. Marwan Asmar holds a PhD from Leeds University and is a freelance writer specializing on the Middle East. He has worked as a journalist since the early 1990s in Jordan and the Gulf countries, and been widely published, including at Albawaba, Gulf News, Al Ghad, World Press Review and others.

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‘No Need For Your Crocodile Tears’
  • HebaHeba
  • August 13, 2026

By Ismail Al Sharif

“I’ll say it frankly: We should have exerted more pressure on Israel to adopt a different approach in Gaza” – Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor to ex-President Joe Biden.

A striking phenomenon is recurring in American politics: Some presidents, cabinet members, and senior officials become more outspoken in their stances toward the Israeli occupation entity after leaving office, expressing regret for decisions that contributed to the injustice inflicted upon the Palestinian people.

This may be due to their liberation from diplomatic and partisan constraints, the pressures of Zionist lobbies, and the influence of tainted money, or perhaps their consciences awaken belatedly as they feel closer to death, realizing the enormity of the injustice they participated in or condoned.

Examples of this are numerous. Among the most prominent is former US President Jimmy Carter, who, after leaving office, shifted from a traditional pro-Zionist rhetoric to criticizing the Israeli occupation and its policies. Then there is Chuck Hagel, former US Secretary of Defense, who held the United States responsible for the Zionists’ continued aggression and described their practices as terrorism— but only after his retirement, of course.

Robert Gates, the former Secretary of Defense, also criticized war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, calling him ungrateful.

More recently, Jake Sullivan, former National Security Advisor, and Antony Blinken, Biden’s lackluster Secretary of State, joined the ranks of those who have expressed regret. Both men have blood on their hands from the blood of Palestinian children and played a shameful role in supporting the Israeli entity during one of the greatest acts of genocide in modern history.

This was revealed in a lengthy investigation published in The New Yorker magazine last 20th July, titled “How Biden Enabled Israel’s Aggression Against Gaza – and Iran,” with the subtitle: “Top officials from the previous Administration now express regret over their failure to rein in Netanyahu.”

However, this regret will not absolve them for they knew full well that the Zionists were committing genocide in Gaza. On 5 March, 2024, five months after the start of the genocide, Mirjana Spoljarić, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), sent a confidential letter to President Biden. The ICRC, in addition to its humanitarian mission, is obligated under the Geneva Conventions to provide states with information and advice to help them avoid committing war crimes.

In her letter, Spoljarić reminded President Biden that the organization had condemned the “horrific” massacre perpetrated by Hamas against Israelis on 7 October 2023 and that it had continued to press the movement “tirelessly” for the release of the “hostages” it was holding.

However, this time she appealed to Biden with “grave concern,” warning that Israel, which had continued to bombard Gaza with heavy munitions since that October, was ignoring the ICRC in an unprecedented manner.

In her letter, she wrote: “The way Israel conducts hostilities is inconsistent with the laws of armed conflict, particularly the obligations to protect civilians, to distinguish between military objectives on the one hand and civilians and civilian infrastructure on the other, to ensure the humane treatment of detainees and the dead, to protect medical facilities and personnel, and to provide and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid.”

Despite these clear warnings, the United States remained a key partner in the genocide, providing weapons, money, and political and international cover to Israel. And now some of its officials come to shed crocodile tears for the children of Gaza!

I say to them: You have no right to repent now, after all these martyrs, after all these tragedies, to say: “We are sorry, we made a mistake.” You knew, and you had the power to pressure and prevent, but you chose to support, arm, and cover up. You bear the burden of what happened, and the blood of the children of Gaza will haunt you and pursue your names to the dustbin of history.

This piece by Ismail Al Sharif was originally published in the Arabic Addustour daily and reprinted in English in Crossfirearabia.com.

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Israel Arrest Palestinian Journalist and Drop Site Contributor Mohammed Awad

Israeli forces have arrested Palestinian journalist and Drop Site contributor, Mohammad Awad, 38, from his hometown of Bitunia, west Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, early Wednesday morning. Two other Palestinians were arrested after raiding and searching their homes in the nearby city of Al-Bireh, according to the Wafa news agency. Israeli soldiers first raided an apartment in a different neighborhood that Awad’s family had moved out of months earlier, breaking down the door only to find it empty, Awad’s wife Eman told Al-Araby. They then went on foot to the family’s current home and pounded on the door until Awad opened it. He was blindfolded, handcuffed behind his back, and forced to walk down five flights of stairs before being taken away in a military jeep in a scene captured on video. Awad’s reporting for Drop Site has covered escalating violence by Israeli settlers across the West Bank, including the burning of a mosque in Qusra, south of Nablus, and an attack in Masafer Yatta last week that wounded five Palestinians and burned four homes. With his detention, the number of Palestinian journalists held in Israeli prisons has risen to 40, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society. Israel has killed more than 260 journalists since it began its genocide in Gaza, two of whom died in Israeli prisons according to Drop Site News.

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