Journalists' Syndicate: 42 Journalists Arrested Including 8 Female Journalists During 2025

SadaNews - The Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate confirmed today, Thursday, that the Israeli occupation army and government continued in 2025 their policy of systematic targeting of Palestinian journalists through arbitrary detentions, administrative arrests, assault and abuse, expulsion, confiscation of equipment, and coercive interrogation, in a clear attempt to silence Palestinian coverage and break the national media structure.

The Syndicate's freedom committee monitored 42 cases of arrest of Palestinian journalists during 2025, which occurred in the West Bank, occupied Jerusalem, within the territories of 1948, at military checkpoints and crossings, during field coverage, and during raids on their homes.

The committee indicated that the decrease in the number of arrests compared to 2023 (64 cases) and 2024 (58 cases) does not reflect any improvement in the behavior of the occupation, but rather reveals a dangerous shift from quantitative targeting to qualitative targeting, by focusing arrests on the most influential journalists, repeatedly arresting the same journalist, expanding administrative arrests without charges or trial, and using physical and psychological violence as a deterrent tool.

The committee documented dozens of cases where journalists were arrested while performing their professional duties, including coverage of military incursions, settlement assaults, and humanitarian work, which confirms that arrest has become an immediate means of emptying the field of witnesses and preventing the truth from being conveyed.

2025 witnessed a significant increase in the raiding of journalists' homes and their arrest in front of their families, in an attempt to break them psychologically and socially, transforming arrest from a repressive measure into a collective punishment affecting the family and social environment.

The freedom committee considered that the occupation's resort to administrative detention against several journalists represents one of the gravest forms of targeting, as it occurs without a clear charge, deprives the journalist of the right to defense, and turns them into a prisoner of opinion without a time limit, which constitutes a flagrant violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The year 2025 recorded targeting of Palestinian female journalists through arrest, investigation, and deportation, including the re-arrest of some, indicating a serious sign of systematic gender violence within the repression system.

The committee affirmed that these incidents coincide with documented testimonies from foreign female journalists who faced severe violations inside prisons, placing these crimes among the serious violations that could rise to international crimes.

The committee documented numerous cases where journalists were subjected to beatings, threats with weapons, dragging, humiliation, in addition to the confiscation of cameras, phones, and journalistic equipment without their return after release, in a clear attempt to incapacitate their professional ability and prevent them from continuing their journalistic work.

The targeting extended to include academics, media professors, and influential journalists, indicating that the occupation has started to target not only news but the entire system of consciousness and truths conveyed by the Palestinian journalistic situation.

The Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate demanded that the international community and human rights organizations bear their legal and moral responsibilities, calling on the United Nations and special rapporteurs on freedom of opinion and expression for urgent intervention, and to hold the occupation's leaders accountable for their crimes against the Palestinian press.

The freedom committee confirmed that Palestinian journalism will continue to perform its professional and national role, despite all policies of repression and arrest, and that targeting journalists will not succeed in silencing the truth or obscuring the crimes.