Oren Ziv
+972 Magazine / November 24, 2025
Relatives say the detention of Ayman Ghrayeb, known for documenting forcible displacement across the West Bank, is intended to quell his activism.
On Nov. 17, Palestinian activist Ayman Ghrayeb arrived at the entrance to the village of Fasayil, in the Jordan Valley region of the occupied West Bank, to document a community in the process of being wiped out by state-sanctioned Jewish settler violence. When he got there, however, Jewish settlers blocked his way and called the army to the scene. Ghrayeb was detained for several hours and then disappeared to an unknown location.
Both the Israeli army and police initially denied having taken Ghrayeb into custody. Only two days later did his lawyers receive any information about his whereabouts: He was being held at the Samra military base in the Jordan Valley, where soldiers kept him outdoors in handcuffs, deprived him of food for three days, and beat him so severely that he required medical inspection.
It was not until Sunday, six days after his arrest, that Ghrayeb was first interrogated, and even then only on the vague suspicion of “incitement.” The questioning appears to have been a mere box-ticking exercise; his attorney had already been notified in advance that Ghrayeb would be placed under administrative detention — a form of indefinite incarceration without charge or trial based on undisclosed “evidence,” which Israel is increasingly wielding against nonviolent activists in the West Bank.
Ghrayeb is now being held in Megiddo Prison, where at least seven Palestinians have died since October 2023. A military judge is expected to rubber stamp his detention order tomorrow.
A 42-year-old father of four from the town of Tammun, Ghrayeb is a prominent field activist who often travels to sites of settler attacks, military abuse, and expulsions of Palestinian communities, documenting the events and publishing videos on social media. He is often the only activist doing this work, which has made him a target for settlers.
A press release from Ghrayeb’s family and colleagues stated that his work is dedicated to “supporting the right of Palestinians to live on their land with dignity.” His arrest, they added, “is not an isolated case. Settlers in the Jordan Valley have already turned to the army several times against Ayman, in order to interfere with his nonviolent work.”
Historically, under Israel’s military legal system in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian detainees have to be brought before a judge within 96 hours of their arrest; this is in contrast to Israeli citizens, for whom the maximum detention period before a hearing is 24 hours.
Since the beginning of the Gaza war, however, Israel has implemented a new policy: Anyone arrested and placed under the custody of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, as Ghrayeb was, can be held for up to eight days before seeing a judge. Often, on the seventh or eighth day, the state announces that the detainee is being placed into administrative detention, allowing them to be held for an additional 12 days before a hearing.
Israel is currently holding 3,368 Palestinians in administrative detention. This does not include an additional 1,200 detainees arrested in Gaza since October 2023, who are being held in similar conditions under the legal category of “unlawful combatants.” At least 98 Palestinians have died in Israeli custody over the past two years, many seemingly as a result of torture, medical neglect, and food deprivation.
Ghrayeb’s brother, Bilal, told +972 Magazine that on the day of his arrest, settlers first blocked Ghrayeb’s car and then called the army. “When the army arrived, they detained him for three hours,” Bilal said. “The settlers tried to convince the army to arrest him, they showed them what Ayman was filming, but the soldiers waited for their orders. Then the soldiers spoke to a Shin Bet officer, who said, ‘This time Ayman will go to prison.’”
According to Bilal, “Ayman was arrested only to please the settlers. They know very well that he is active throughout the West Bank — in Hebron, Ramallah, Jenin, Nablus, and the Jordan Valley — and that he is working to get information out to the whole world along with many activists, journalists, and diplomats. They think that by arresting him they can silence him.
“The settlers have tried many times to silence him,” Bilal continued. “They have physically attacked him, they have vandalized his car. Very few people know the communities he is in contact with. He brings in the media and human rights organizations. When Ayman is detained, there is no one to document their crimes, so they will increase their attacks and theft of land.”
Andrey X, an independent journalist and activist who has been in the field many times with Ghrayeb, told +972 Magazine: “I saw how he helped every person he met — all his hundreds, maybe thousands, of friends in the area. He invests his time, money, and effort to supporting people under threat of settler violence. He is very public with his activities, which is why he became a target of the settlers.
“Less than a month ago, he was arrested together with another journalist, again for no reason. They blindfolded him in a car and held him for several hours. It’s just harassment. And this happened after they checked his ID which appears on every list imaginable. He told me stories about how every time they check his ID at a checkpoint, they stop him.”
In a statement to +972 Magazine, an Israeli army spokesperson said they had “arrested a Palestinian suspect in the Jordan Valley during a routine security check,” and that the arrest “was carried out in accordance with procedure.” The Shin Bet did not respond to a request for comment.
‘They want to silence us’
Ghrayeb is only the latest nonviolent activist to be baselessly arrested in the West Bank. On Oct. 10, the Israeli army came to the home of Rabia Abu Naim — a 33-year-old father of three, a resident of the village of Al-Mughayyir north of Ramallah, and an activist against the takeover of his village’s lands by settlers — while he was in the midst of coordinating volunteers to support this year’s olive harvest.
Soldiers detained him for seven days, during which he was questioned for only 11 minutes, before issuing him with an administrative detention order for at least six months. He is currently being held at Ofer Camp, near Ramallah, where at least two detainees have died since October 2023.
Abu Naim was already held in administrative detention for almost a year and a half between May 2021 and October 2022. Before his latest arrest, he told +972 Magazine that he received a phone call from a Shin Bet officer who tried to get him to state which political party he is affiliated with; Abu Naim insisted that he is not affiliated with any party, he is merely an activist on behalf of his community and other communities under threat.
“The tool of administrative detention has always been used illegally and unreasonably to oppress Palestinians, but since the beginning of the war, all lines have been crossed and there is not even a semblance of due process,” attorney Riham Nasra, who represents both Ghrayeb and Abu Naim, told +972 Magazine.
“Thousands of Palestinians are being held in detention for months in inhumane conditions, based on suspicions and classified information, with no ability to defend themselves — all in the name of ‘security,’” she continued. “In the shadow of the war, Palestinian political activists who take part in legal activities are also arrested. Speaking out against the war and ethnic cleansing, planning to help families during the olive harvest, and encouraging residents to hold on to their homes have become cause for suspicion for which people are being held behind bars for months.”
After the Israeli army cut down thousands of olive trees in Al-Mughayyir in August, Abu Naim spoke to +972 Magazine about the increase in military raids, road closures, and arrests, and the establishment of new settler outposts that have surrounded the village on all sides.
“This is a policy aimed at expelling the population, a policy that has been planned for a long time,” he said. “They already control the [Jordan] Valley and the surrounding areas — now it is the turn of the villages closest to it. Every day there is harassment and new restrictions. [The army] takes every small pretext and turns it into a big operation.”
About a month before he was arrested, Abu Naim witnessed the murder of his friend, 20-year-old Saeed Na’asan, when settlers invaded Al-Mughayyir and opened fire. After the killing, soldiers entered the village and also fired live ammunition at residents, wounding another young man, before escorting the settlers back to their outpost.
“There were three settlers dressed in white with rifles,” Abu Naim told Local Call after the killing. “They knelt down and fired from less than 100 meters away, each in turn. Saeed was wounded in the chest; the bullet went in from the left and came out from the right. When I saw him, I knew he was dead.
“He is not the first martyr nor the last,” Abu Naim continued. “They want to break us, but it is futile. Even if they keep killing, we will not leave. There is hardly a home here without someone wounded, killed, or imprisoned.”
Munther Amira, an activist and resident of Aida refugee camp on the outskirts of Bethlehem, was arrested and placed in administrative detention for three months at the beginning of the war. “This started a long time ago, but after October 7 it was clear they do not want any kind of actions against the occupation — even when we’re speaking about nonviolent activists trying to protect the people,” he told +972 Magazine.
“Arresting Ayman and sending him to administrative detention is part of a continuous process to threaten the activists [against] being with the people,” Amira continued. “While they provide protection to settlers who attack [Palestinians], they put more obstacles in the way of [those who are] protecting them.
“They want to silence us,” he went on. “They don’t want us to document or to protect the people. They want to empty all of Area C and send us to live in Bantustans. But even if they attack, injure, or arrest the activists, we’ll continue our activism. We’re not doing anything against the law. We’re exercising our right to make our voices heard, to protect our people.”
According to Amira, the increasingly harsh conditions inside Israeli prisons are intended to break the spirit of detainees and deter them from returning to activism. “Time in prison now would break anyone,” he said. “The conditions in which people live there, the torture, the denial of food, the cutting off of any kind of contact between them and their families, is an experience of death. By sending them there, they want to make sure that anyone who dares to raise their voice will be silenced.
“From my experience, it was not easy to go back and stand up and start my activism again,” he continued. “They deliberately choose the popular activists who are most connected to the ground. What people are doing now is sumud [steadfastness], so by breaking these activists, you are breaking the idea of sumud.”
Oren Ziv is a photojournalist, reporter for Local Call, and a founding member of the Activestills photography collective
