NABLUS, (PIC)
Palestinian journalist Mujahid Bani Mufleh spent 14 months in Israeli prisons, a long journey through darkness that left him with bleeding in his brain, accumulated injuries from repeated beatings and an anguish that continued to burn within him.
No sooner had he stepped onto free ground than he found himself racing against death on an operating table, in a scene that bitterly encapsulates the suffering endured by Palestinian prisoners behind the walls of Israeli detention facilities.
At dawn on June 28, 2025, a large Israeli military force stormed the home of 37-year-old journalist Mujahid Mohammed Bani Mufleh in the town of Beita, south of Nablus, without knocking or issuing any warning.
His wife, Nuha al-Shurafa, recalled that the family suddenly found Israeli soldiers inside their home.
She said the soldiers beat her husband, smashed his personal office, confiscated his computer and took him away in handcuffs to the Israeli military detention center at Huwara.
It was not his first arrest. Israeli occupation forces had previously detained him twice, in 2015 and again in 2020, releasing him both times without filing any formal charges.
Just 10 days after his latest arrest, an Israeli military court placed him under administrative detention for four months without charge or trial.
Administrative detention allows Israel to imprison Palestinians on the basis of “secret evidence” that neither the detainees nor their lawyer is permitted to examine.
When the first detention order expired, Israeli authorities renewed it for another two months. A further two-month extension followed after a military court rejected an appeal submitted by his lawyer.
The months accumulated heavily as he remained imprisoned at Menashe prison, located within the Salem military camp in the northern West Bank, while his three children waited for their father to return through a door that remained closed.
“Heavy days in which I experienced hunger until bread became a dream, and thirst until a sip of water became a blessing. I endured forms of humiliation and torture capable of changing the features of the soul before the body,” released journalist Mujahid Bani Mufleh said.
Hunger of the body, thirst of the soul
Following his release, Bani Mufleh poured his experience into words published on his social media page.
“Heavy days in which I experienced hunger until bread became a dream, and thirst until a sip of water became a blessing,” he wrote.
“I endured forms of humiliation and torture capable of changing the features of the soul before the body. There, between the cold walls and the long nights, I learned how hunger can break pride, and how pain can strip a person of everything except faith and patience.”
What Bani Mufleh described was not an isolated case. Ultra Palestine, where he works as an editor, documented that Israel’s systematic starvation policy inside its prisons caused him to lose around 25 kilograms during his detention.
He was also subjected to severe physical assaults, particularly to his head and back, during repeated rounds of beatings, especially while being transferred between cells.
His hands and feet were kept shackled in iron restraints for prolonged periods, causing him to lose sensation in his limbs.
From the prison gate to the operating room
The prison doors finally opened for Bani Mufleh on January 12, 2026, but his freedom was quickly overshadowed by pain that extended far beyond the prison walls.
Just two days after his release, his health suddenly deteriorated. He developed extreme fatigue, became unable to walk and experienced reduced sensation in his limbs.
An ambulance rushed him to the Istishari Arab Hospital in Ramallah during the early hours of the night.
Medical examinations revealed severe bleeding in his brain and dangerously high blood pressure. Doctors took him into surgery in the early morning.
The Asra Media Office (AMO) described his condition as a case of “deferred execution” or “slow killing.”
It said Israeli authorities release detainees only after exhausting and destroying their bodies, leaving them to begin a new ordeal outside prison.
The AMO held Israeli authorities fully responsible for any further deterioration in Bani Mufleh’s health.
To this day, the journalist continues to limp because of the iron shackles placed on his legs for extended periods.
His hands also remain locked in a struggle with numbness after the restraints damaged his nerves.
193 detained journalists: A systemic pattern of persecution
Bani Mufleh’s case is not an exception in a journalistic landscape increasingly consumed by persecution.
Since the beginning of Israel’s genocide in Gaza in October 2023, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society has documented the arrest or detention of at least 193 Palestinian journalists, many of whom remain behind bars.
Israeli authorities accuse most detained journalists of “incitement” over material they publish through media outlets and social media platforms.
Others are held under administrative detention orders based on “secret evidence” that cannot be meaningfully challenged.
In Gaza, Israel classifies detained journalists as so-called “unlawful combatants,” using the designation to provide a false legal pretext for systematic assassinations that have killed dozens of media workers.
During his long course of treatment, Bani Mufleh wrote from the depths of his suffering, “I realized that the blessings we once considered ordinary were more precious than we ever imagined: a satisfying meal, safe sleep, a breath without pain, a step without disability, and the face of someone you love seen without chains.
“Fourteen months were enough to teach me that health is a crown, freedom is life, and dignity is not a minor detail, but the very soul of a human being.”
These words, written by a hand struggling to remember how to hold a pen, convey what human rights reports cannot capture through numbers alone: that the price of the free word in Palestine may be more than any person should have to bear.