At the age of 16, Palestinian Christian Shadi Khoury was arrested by Israeli forces at his family home in Jerusalem in October 2022.
His family and legal representatives allege he was beaten, dragged barefoot from the house, and subjected to repeated interrogation while handcuffed and blindfolded, wearing only his pyjamas. They say he lost consciousness three times and suffered injuries, including a broken nose.
After 41 days held in detention without charge or trial, Khoury was released to house arrest for an entire year, barred from going outside, while facing restricted access to school and constant surveillance.
His charge? Attending a protest.
The now 20-year-old faced 41 court sessions over a three-year period, and despite the prosecution presenting no credible evidence, he was convicted and sentenced to 32 months in February 2026. His sentence has been suspended under appeal until Monday, 4 May, leaving Khoury and his family in limbo.
His mother, Rania Elias, described Shadi as a “shy but hardworking student with quiet self-confidence” and said she stands with all detained Palestinian children as a ‘human obligation’.
“Up against a system where the interrogator, the prosecutor, and the judge function as instruments of colonial occupation, we will persist in our struggle for justice, for freedom, and for the dismantling of this machinery that seeks to destroy Palestinian childhood.”
Israel detains between 500 and 700 Palestinian children each year under “security” pretexts. Since 2000, an estimated 13,000 Palestinian children between the ages of 12 and 17 have been detained, prosecuted, and incarcerated by the Israeli army.
Administrative detention as a mechanism of Apartheid
Khoury’s experience echoes that of 25-year-old Layan Nasir, a Palestinian Christian from the occupied West Bank, abducted from her home by Israeli forces in April 2024. During the 4 am raid, her parents were held at gunpoint while she was zip-tied, blindfolded, and taken without explanation. Nasir was held for eight months with no charge or trial. After her release in December 2024 and repeatedly postponed trials, she was given a further eight-month sentence.
Layan remains in Israeli custody on charges of ‘participation in a banned group’ for volunteering in a student union at Birzeit University, which was retroactively banned. Her family believe the charges are a pretext to punish her for online activism against Israeli human rights violations.
Israel currently holds over 3500 Palestinians without charge or trial, in a system called ‘Administrative Detention’. According to Israel’s Prison Service, there are over 350 Palestinian children currently in Israeli captivity, some as young as twelve years old, with over half held without charge or trial. Israel remains the only nation in the world to charge children in military courts, with most accused of ‘stone throwing’.
Like Nasir and Khoury, most trials are repeatedly adjourned while defendants negotiate a plea bargain - the fastest and often only way out of the system, regardless of a defendant’s guilt - with rulings often conducted on ‘secret evidence’ which even defence lawyers cannot examine.
The military courts maintain a 96% conviction rate for Palestinians, based largely on confessions as the basis for convictions - frequently acquired under duress of threats, solitary confinement, violence, psychological abuse, denial of access to legal counsel, and torture. By contrast, Israeli settlers in the West Bank face a prosecution rate of just 3% in Israeli civil courts.
Human rights groups say holding two different legal systems based on race creates a key factor in Israel’s system of apartheid.
94 Palestinian deaths in Israel custody since October 2023
At least 94 Palestinians have died from physical violence or medical neglect in Israeli custody since October 2023, and over 700 bodies reportedly remain withheld or seized by Israel, including the bodies of 67 Palestinian children.
One of them is 17-year-old Walid Ahmad, who was reportedly starved to death in captivity last year. Despite an autopsy concluding the leading cause of death was starvation, an Israeli judge closed the investigation into Ahmad’s death, and the family have still not received his body.
One of Israel’s leading human rights organisations, B’Tselem, released a detailed report in 2025 naming Israel’s prison system ‘a network of torture camps’, citing systematic and widespread physical, psychological, and sexual abuse of prisoners, as well as starvation.
Online commentators have raised what they call a ‘striking double standard’ in global attitudes to Israeli captives held in Gaza, while Palestinian captives have been held in similar circumstances for decades prior, with minimal response from world leaders and news media.
Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, transferring detainees from an occupied territory to the territory of the occupier is prohibited, yet only one of Israel’s 20 major prisons - Ofer Military Prison - is located inside the occupied West Bank. Under international law, Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza is considered illegal; a ruling reaffirmed in a vote at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2024.
Despite voting in support of the UN motion, the New Zealand government has done little to alter its current diplomatic relationship with the Israeli state, adding two Israeli government ministers to existing sanctions on 33 individual settlers.
New bill sanctions execution of prisoners
In March 2026, the State of Israel passed a bill to mandate the execution of Palestinian prisoners who commit terror-related murder, but not Israelis charged with the same crime.
While the death penalty by hanging has been mandated within 90-days of conviction for those found guilty of ‘terror-related murder’ in Israeli military courts - where Palestinians face trial - the civil court system, where Israeli citizens face trial, requires ‘an intent to negate the existence of the State of Israel’—effectively limiting its use to Palestinian Arabs.
Many other safeguards have also been removed by the legislation, which ‘enjoys broad support from the Israeli public’ according to Israeli rights group B’tselem. The law has been slammed by numerous human rights groups as ‘discriminatory’ and ‘cruel’;
“With these bills, the Israeli government is brazenly granting itself carte blanche to impose death sentences on Palestinians. Any death sentences imposed under these amendments would constitute a violation of the right to life and, when imposed by a military court, may also amount to war crimes,” says Amnesty International’s Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns, Erika Guevara Rosas.
Adam Coogle, deputy Middle East director from Human Rights Watch, says with severe restrictions on appeals and a 90-day execution timeline, “this bill aims to kill Palestinian detainees faster and with less scrutiny.”
While the current penalty doesn’t include captives like Shadi Khoury and Layan Nasir, it is expected that the precedent and dehumanisation of the recent law, rights groups warn an increase in the severity and frequency of abuse, torture, and inhuman degrading conditions already widespread throughout Israeli prisons.
Cole Martin is a New Zealand journalist based in the occupied Palestinian territories.
