RAMALLAH, West Financial institution—Even from the protected distance of Florida, Mohammed Ibrahim is continually reminded of the trauma that he endured throughout his detention in an Israeli jail final yr. The 16-year-old was arrested final February within the occupied West Financial institution and held with out cost for 9 months earlier than a worldwide lobbying effort secured his launch.
Ibrahim returned house to Palm Bay, Florida, final November. On his physique are seen scars from the accidents and starvation he says he suffered by the hands of Israeli safety forces. He misplaced 33 kilos throughout his time in jail and is now being handled for scabies, a contagious pores and skin an infection that he contracted as a consequence of overcrowding and the denial of hygiene merchandise.
“The times had been full of beatings, humiliation, and starvation. I really feel blessed that I’m now free,” mentioned Ibrahim, who spoke over the telephone from Florida. “In jail, troopers beat and pepper-sprayed us. We had little meals, so I slept or drank water to alleviate the starvation.”
Mohammad Ibrahim at Busch Gardens in Tampa Bay, Florida, on Jan. 5. Courtesy of the Ibrahim Household
The Israel Jail Service (IPS) refuted Ibrahim’s allegations, saying in a press release to International Coverage that it’s “not conscious of the claims described, and to one of the best of our information, no such incidents occurred beneath IPS duty.” The IPS added that “for causes of privateness and safety,” it “doesn’t touch upon particular person circumstances.”
Ibrahim’s ordeal drew international consideration partly as a result of he’s a U.S. citizen. However in any other case, it was not distinctive. Israel at the moment holds roughly 360 Palestinian youngsters on “safety” grounds, 168 of them with out cost, in accordance with rights group Protection for Kids Worldwide-Palestine (DCIP). Round 75 p.c of detained Palestinian minors report bodily violence, in accordance with the group, based mostly on the testimony of 766 Palestinian youngsters detained between 2016 and 2022.
Ibrahim’s case was “emblematic of a wider disaster—one wherein the rights of youngsters, particularly those with no international passports, are ignored in a system that’s essentially unjust,” mentioned Khaled Quzmar, DCIP’s basic director.
Ibrahim was simply 15 years outdated when a nighttime arrest abruptly reworked his life.
Within the early hours of Feb. 16, 2025, Israeli troopers pounded on the door of the Ibrahim household house within the Palestinian village of al-Mazraa al-Sharqiya, about eight miles northeast of Ramallah. After Ibrahim’s father, Zaher Ibrahim, responded, troops pressured their manner inside and headed to the teenager’s room. They allowed him solely minutes to placed on garments earlier than binding his arms, blindfolding him, and taking him away. The troopers supplied no rationalization for Ibrahim’s arrest and refused to let his mother and father or a lawyer accompany him.
“The troopers began beating me after they hurled me into their jeep,” Ibrahim mentioned. “Once I mentioned I used to be in ache, they beat me much more.”
Ibrahim had been visiting family within the occupied West Financial institution. He would spend the following 9 months in an Israeli jail beneath so-called administrative detention—a follow that permits Israeli authorities to carry Palestinians for extended intervals with out cost, trial, or proof. He was launched after intensive media protection and advocacy from relations, human rights teams, and a few U.S. lawmakers.
In accordance with an Israeli navy video of Ibrahim’s interrogation obtained by the household, Israeli officers accused the teenager of throwing stones at Jewish settlers, roughly half 1,000,000 of whom stay in West Financial institution settlements—that are thought-about unlawful beneath worldwide regulation. In a November 2025 assertion reported by a number of media retailers, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s workplace mentioned Ibrahim had dedicated a “critical doubtlessly lethal crime” and insisted {that a} navy courtroom was following due course of.
Israeli settlers and Palestinians within the West Financial institution are topic to 2 completely different authorized methods. For the previous, Israeli civil regulation applies. Palestinians are topic to navy regulation and orders issued by the Israeli navy commander. Palestinians are tried in Israeli navy courts, which offer restricted procedural protections in contrast with civilian courts and have a near-100% conviction charge for Palestinians.
The Israeli Embassy in Washington mentioned in a letter distributed to U.S. lawmakers final yr and obtained by the Guardian that Ibrahim confessed to twice throwing stones at autos. In a sworn affidavit to a lawyer, nonetheless, the teenager later wrote: “The interrogator threatened that if I didn’t comply, he would instruct the troopers to beat me. Out of sheer worry, I in the end confessed.”
Expenses of stone-throwing carry sentences of as much as 20 years in jail beneath Israeli navy regulation. They’re routinely leveled towards Palestinian youngsters within the occupied West Financial institution, the place detention services are infamous for mistreatment. Rights teams comparable to DCIP say the follow serves as a way of social management, permitting Israeli authorities to detain Palestinian minors with minimal proof and little authorized oversight.
An Israeli flag flies subsequent to the gate of Megiddo Jail in northern Israel on July 24, 2018. Amir Cohen/Reuters
For Ibrahim’s household, the months that adopted his arrest had been marked by worry and helplessness. Zaher Ibrahim, who’s a father of 4, couldn’t see or converse to his son for everything of his detention. (Palestinians wouldn’t have any means to speak to individuals in jail besides by way of attorneys or, within the youthful Ibrahim’s case, U.S. Embassy personnel.) “Ask anybody on the town,” Zaher Ibrahim mentioned. “They are going to inform you Mohammed is respectful, has robust morals, and is cherished wherever he goes.”
Final October, 27 Democratic and unbiased U.S. lawmakers urged the State Division to strain Israel to launch the teenager. The U.S. Embassy in Israel subsequently assigned a consultant to go to Ibrahim at Ofer Jail within the West Financial institution and monitor his situation. (Ibrahim had initially been detained at Megiddo Jail, a most safety facility in northern Israel, earlier than being transferred.)
“After visiting Mohammed, the case employee advised me he had dangerous information,” Zaher Ibrahim mentioned. “He mentioned my son’s well being and emotional well-being had been in sharp decline, that he had misplaced plenty of weight and had darkish rings round his eyes. All I may assume was how he’s solely a toddler put in what looks like a coffin. The jail is sort of a torture chamber.”
No less than 94 Palestinians have died in Israeli detention since October 2023, in accordance with Physicians for Human Rights-Israel. The group attributes their deaths to torture and systemic denial of medical care.
This toll contains Walid Khalid Abdullah Ahmad, a 17-year-old from the city of Silwad, northeast of Ramallah, who was a cellmate of Ibrahim’s at Megiddo. Ahmad, a twin Brazilian Palestinian nationwide, died in March 2025; Israeli authorities have but to launch his physique to his household for burial.
“An post-mortem confirmed that Walid had died from medical neglect, excessive malnutrition, and issues compounded by the denial of lifesaving medical intervention,” mentioned Quzmar of DCIP. Ahmad was the primary recognized Palestinian baby to die inside Israeli prisons since October 2023, “and we worry for the opposite youngsters, who’re remoted from the world, denied meals, medical care, and even visits from the Purple Cross,” Quzmar added. In accordance with DCIP, Israeli navy regulation permits for the detention and prosecution of Palestinian youngsters as younger as 12.
Quzmar, together with different human rights organizations and the United Nations, asserts that Israeli detention practices—together with torture, sexual violence, and coercive interrogations—have intensified since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas led a shock assault on Israel. In response, Israel started a yearslong struggle within the Gaza Strip that quite a few entities, together with the U.N., human rights teams, and authorized specialists, have known as a genocide.
The IPS mentioned it “operates in accordance with the regulation and beneath the supervision of official oversight our bodies” and that “all inmates are held in accordance with authorized procedures, and their rights together with entry to meals, medical care, and satisfactory dwelling circumstances are upheld by professionally skilled workers.”
The Ibrahim household’s native consultant in Florida, Republican Mike Haridopolos, supplied them little help after his son’s detention, Zaher Ibrahim mentioned; the identical went for Sens. Rick Scott and Ashley Moody, Gov. Ron DeSantis, and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who’s himself from Florida.
However Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen took up Ibrahim’s case, assembly together with his father throughout a go to to Ramallah final August. It was additionally Van Hollen, together with Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley and Florida Reps. Kathy Castor and Maxwell Frost, who spearheaded lawmakers’ October 2025 letter to the State Division, writing that it had “no greater precedence than the security and safety of U.S. residents overseas.”
In a press release to International Coverage, a State Division spokesperson didn’t handle why it took months to safe Ibrahim’s launch, regardless of Israel being a staunch U.S. ally. “All through Mohammed Ibrahim’s incarceration, the embassy staff in Israel and State Division in Washington labored tirelessly on his behalf via common and high-level engagement with the federal government of Israel and supplied steady consular help to Mohammed and his household,” the assertion learn.
Tragedy weighed closely on Ibrahim’s household all through the teenager’s detention. Throughout these months, his 20-year-old cousin, Sayfollah Musallet—additionally a U.S. citizen—was crushed to demise by Israeli settlers within the occupied West Financial institution. Though U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee urged Israel to “aggressively examine” the killing, authorities have made no arrests, reflecting a long-standing sample wherein settler assaults on Palestinians largely go unpunished.
Analysts and rights advocates say Ibrahim’s ordeal highlights the US’ inconsistent method towards its residents in Israel-Palestine. Washington had acted swiftly on behalf of Israeli Individuals in danger, together with by lobbying for the discharge of Edan Alexander, a U.S. citizen serving within the Israeli military whom Hamas captured throughout its Oct. 7, 2023, assault. Alexander was freed final Might in a bid by Hamas to revive cease-fire negotiations.
In accordance with Ammar Jumhour, a Palestinian educational and political analyst based mostly in Ramallah, Ibrahim’s case exhibits that there are restricted privileges to holding U.S. citizenship if you’re additionally Palestinian.
The “plight of Palestinian Individuals going through violence or illegal detention receives far much less urgency” in Washington, Jumhour mentioned. “If something, Israel intentionally goes after Palestinian Individuals to push them out of the West Financial institution and guarantee they by no means come again.”
In jail, Israeli troopers knew that Ibrahim was American. “It didn’t make a distinction,” he mentioned. “I used to be mistreated identical to everybody else.”
Ibrahim has now regained a few of his misplaced weight and is making an attempt to get a greater evening’s sleep. Between visiting household and buddies, he obtained his learner’s allow and continues to assist run his household’s ice cream store.
