‘Israeli soldiers dragged me out of my West Bank home then beat and spat on me in nightmare six-hour ordeal’

A Palestinian journalist has said he was beaten, blindfolded and handcuffed with zip ties after being taken from his village by a group of Israeli soldiers in a horrific six hour ordeal - before being released without charge. Mohammad Hesham, 23, was seized from his village of at-Tuwani and ordered onto his knees before being driven to Susya military base in Masafer Yatta, in the southern part of the occupied West Bank.Over a six-hour period, Mr Hesham told The Independent he was spat on, abused, and told he would die in custody. He says his treatment worsened after the troops took his phone and discovered he was a journalist and activist. “It was terrifying,” he says ten days on from the incident. “It was crazy. It was really tough for me, especially after they knew that I was a journalist. That was a nightmare.”Mr Hesham, in black, was blindfolded before being taken away in the car (Mohammad Hesham Hureini)The Israeli military said Hesham was arrested “after approaching an Israeli community in the southern Hebron Hills in a suspicious manner”. It said he was “held for several hours and subsequently released”, adding: “IDF soldiers are authorized to detain suspects for six hours.”But Mr Hesham says he was seized while at home with his family. Security footage seen and published by The Independent, shows no evidence of the military’s version of events. Instead, the troops are seen approaching Mr Hesham’s village and summoning him out before detaining him.It is the latest example of incidents across the occupied territories in which Palestinians are arbitrarily detained for hours by Israeli forces without being formally charged or accused of any crime. According to Israeli human rights group B’tselem, the Israel Prison Service (IPS) was holding 3,198 Palestinians, including 94 children, in ‘administrative detention’ - the arrest and imprisonment of individuals without a formal criminal charge, trial or conviction - as of June 2026.Footage of the incident shows Mr Hesham on his knees surrounded by the armed troops (Mohammad Hesham Hureini)This is one of several manifestations of Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian land, deemed by the UN’s top court as illegal under international law.Mr Hesham was not added to Israel’s long list of administrative detainees - but arrests such as his are common in Masafer Yatta, an area facing a steep increase in forced evictions, home demolitions and settler attacks in recent years. “Whatever you do, you are just a Palestinian, you have to suffer,” he says. “And this was actually our crime. They took me from my house with no reason for the arrest, just lies. We knew that our only crime was being Palestinians.”The journalist and activist, who among others has written for The New Arab, +972 Magazine, and documents life in Masafer Yatta on social media, says he was with his family in at-Tuwani at around 4.30pm in the afternoon when the troops approached and ordered him to leave.Security footage shows Mr Hesham being summoned before his home before being marched away (Mohammad Hesham Hureini)The footage of Mr Hesham’s detention shows him being taken away with his hands behind his back, before another video shows him on his knees, surrounded by the armed soldiers. He is afterwards seen with his hands on a car, as the troops tie a blindfold round his head - that Mr Hesham says was fashioned from a used rubbish bag with a “really bad smell”.Mr Hesham was taken to a military base, where he says his hands were zip tied and he was thrown to the ground, before being ordered to unlock his phone. When he refused, he says, he was beaten and told by one of the soldiers: “When I tell you to open the phone, you open the phone.”He relented: “For how long can I resist? I was in a military base. So I cannot really fight for so long because if I do, it will not be [just] one soldier beating me. Everyone will come and they will enjoy beating me.”Once they discovered he was a journalist and activist with an online following, the situation worsened, Mr Hesham says. Mr Hesham lives in Masafer Yatta, an area of the occupied West Bank’s Area C, under total Israeli military and administrative control (Mohammad Hesham Hureini)He was told he is “not allowed to take whatever, no water, no food, no bathroom, nothing”, he says, adding that he “had to stay on the ground” with his blindfold on for the full six hours.“When I said I want to go to a bathroom they said: ‘We will let you die here. Whatever you ask, we will not give you here. You are here just to die,’” Mr Hesham adds. The military said detention at a military post is “carried out in accordance with established procedures”, adding that it “works tirelessly to investigate suspicions of violations of the law within the IDF”“The allegations of abuse of the detainee are not known to the IDF,” it added. “It should be emphasized that any instance of violence or degrading treatment toward detainees is contrary to IDF orders and values and is inconsistent with the conduct expected of its soldiers.“The IDF examines every suspicion of unlawful conduct thoroughly and professionally, in accordance with the circumstances of each case.”Palestinians stand amid damaged cars burned by Israeli settlers, near Nablus (Reuters)But the incident has highlighted the increasingly blurred lines between Israeli soldiers and armed settlers, with Mr Hesham saying those that initially detained him were a well-recognised group from the nearby settlement of Havat Ma’on - an unofficial outpost considered illegal under both Israeli and international law. Known as Hagmar, these settler-only IDF units were set up as regional security forces in the West Bank following the October 7 attacks. But their creation has been followed by an sharp uptick in violence against Palestinians. According to one former reservist speaking to the Guardian earlier this year, they are “armed militias doing what they want” who are “given a free hand” on the ground.Havat Ma’on, in particular, is infamous in Masafer Yatta as the home of a group of settlers that have allegedly been behind several violent attacks - including one in which homes were set on fire with children still inside. Mohammad Hesham Hureini being accosted by Israeli troops in a separate incident (Mohammad Hesham Hureini)Mr Hesham says the car in which he was detained - and the group that detained him - are notorious in the area for seizing Palestinians without basis.“It's not my story personally, it's the story of every Palestinian in Masafer Yatta,” he says. “There are people I know have been arrested three, four, five times by the same car, by the same settler-soldiers. “Every day they arrest someone from Masafer Yatta. They take you to make you feel that you are nothing.”He issues a plea for help: “This situation is really crazy. I hope it’s going to be changed, there will be serious actions and sanctions against these settlers and soldiers themselves.”