Israeli forces arrest prominent Palestinian journalist in West Bank

The Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate has condemned the arrest of a prominent local journalist by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank.

Ali al-Samoudi, who has worked extensively with Western media, was detained during a raid on his son’s home in the northern city of Jenin early on Tuesday.

The 58-year-old was interrogated for half an hour at an unknown location and was later transferred to an Israeli hospital due to a deterioration in his health, his son Mohammed said.

The Israeli military said Samoudi was “identified with the [Palestinian] Islamic Jihad terrorist organisation” and “suspected in the transfer of funds” to it, without giving any evidence.

His family strongly denied his involvement and said that in his long career he had never previously faced such an accusation.

They said Israeli authorities had not told them the name of the hospital where he was being treated or any other details.

He is expected to be brought before a military court next Tuesday.

The Israeli military separately announced on Tuesday that security forces had detained a total of 24 wanted individuals “involved in the transfer of funds to terrorist organisations”, including three from Jenin, during raids across the West Bank.

In May 2022, Samoudi was working with the Palestinian-American Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Aqla when she was shot dead by an Israeli sniper at the entrance to Jenin refugee camp. He was shot and wounded in the back.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Israeli forces have arrested at least 79 journalists in the West Bank and Gaza since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, while Palestinian authorities have arrested five others.

Another 176 journalists, almost all of them Palestinian, have been killed in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel and Lebanon during the war, the organisation says.