RAMALLAH, West Bank—Even from the safe distance of Florida, Mohammed Ibrahim is constantly reminded of the trauma that he endured during his detention in an Israeli prison last year. The 16-year-old was arrested last February in the occupied West Bank and held without charge for nine months before a global lobbying effort secured his release.

Ibrahim returned home to Palm Bay, Florida, last November. On his body are visible scars from the injuries and hunger he says he suffered at the hands of Israeli security forces. He lost 33 pounds during his time in prison and is now being treated for scabies, a contagious skin infection that he contracted due to overcrowding and the denial of hygiene products.

“The days were filled with beatings, humiliation, and hunger. I feel blessed that I’m now free,” said Ibrahim, who spoke over the phone from Florida. “In prison, soldiers beat and pepper-sprayed us. We had little food, so I slept or drank water to alleviate the hunger.”

The Israel Prison Service (IPS) refuted Ibrahim’s allegations, saying in a statement to Foreign Policy that it is “not aware of the claims described, and to the best of our knowledge, no such incidents occurred under IPS responsibility.” The IPS added that “for reasons of privacy and security,” it “does not comment on individual cases.”

Ibrahim’s ordeal drew global attention in part because he is a U.S. citizen. But otherwise, it was not unique. Israel currently holds roughly 360 Palestinian children on “security” grounds, 168 of them without charge, according to rights group Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP). Around 75 percent of detained Palestinian minors report physical violence, according to the organization, based on the testimony of 766 Palestinian children detained between 2016 and 2022.

Ibrahim’s case was “emblematic of a wider crisis—one in which the rights of children, especially the ones with no foreign passports, are ignored in a system that is fundamentally unjust,” said Khaled Quzmar, DCIP’s general director.

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Ibrahim was just 15 years old when a nighttime arrest abruptly transformed his life.

In the early hours of Feb. 16, 2025, Israeli soldiers pounded on the door of the Ibrahim family home in the Palestinian village of al-Mazraa al-Sharqiya, about eight miles northeast of Ramallah. After Ibrahim’s father, Zaher Ibrahim, responded, troops forced their way inside and headed to the teen’s room. They allowed him only minutes to put on clothes before binding his hands, blindfolding him, and taking him away. The soldiers provided no explanation for Ibrahim’s arrest and refused to let his parents or a lawyer accompany him.

“The soldiers started beating me after they hurled me into their jeep,” Ibrahim said. “When I said I was in pain, they beat me even more.”

Ibrahim had been visiting relatives in the occupied West Bank. He would spend the next nine months in an Israeli prison under so-called administrative detention—a practice that allows Israeli authorities to hold Palestinians for prolonged periods without charge, trial, or evidence. He was released after extensive media coverage and advocacy from family members, human rights groups, and some U.S. lawmakers.

According to an Israeli military video of Ibrahim’s interrogation obtained by the family, Israeli officials accused the teen of throwing stones at Jewish settlers, roughly half a million of whom live in West Bank settlements—which are considered illegal under international law. In a November 2025 statement reported by several media outlets, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Ibrahim had committed a “serious potentially deadly crime” and insisted that a military court was following due process.

Israeli settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank are subject to two different legal systems. For the former, Israeli civil law applies. Palestinians are subject to military law and orders issued by the Israeli military commander. Palestinians are tried in Israeli military courts, which provide limited procedural protections compared with civilian courts and have a near-100 percent conviction rate for Palestinians.

The Israeli Embassy in Washington said in a letter distributed to U.S. lawmakers last year and obtained by the Guardian that Ibrahim confessed to twice throwing stones at vehicles. In a sworn affidavit to a lawyer, however, the teen later wrote: “The interrogator threatened that if I did not comply, he would instruct the soldiers to beat me. Out of sheer fear, I ultimately confessed.”

Charges of stone-throwing carry sentences of up to 20 years in prison under Israeli military law. They are routinely leveled against Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank, where detention facilities are notorious for mistreatment. Rights groups such as DCIP say the practice serves as a means of social control, allowing Israeli authorities to detain Palestinian minors with minimal evidence and little legal oversight.

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For Ibrahim’s family, the months that followed his arrest were marked by fear and helplessness. Zaher Ibrahim, who is a father of four, could not see or speak to his son for the entirety of his detention. (Palestinians do not have any means to talk to people in prison except via lawyers or, in the younger Ibrahim’s case, U.S. Embassy personnel.) “Ask anyone in town,” Zaher Ibrahim said. “They will tell you Mohammed is respectful, has strong morals, and is loved wherever he goes.”

Last October, 27 Democratic and independent U.S. lawmakers urged the State Department to pressure Israel to release the teen. The U.S. Embassy in Israel subsequently assigned a representative to visit Ibrahim at Ofer Prison in the West Bank and monitor his condition. (Ibrahim had initially been detained at Megiddo Prison, a maximum security facility in northern Israel, before being transferred.)

“After visiting Mohammed, the case worker told me he had bad news,” Zaher Ibrahim said. “He said my son’s health and emotional well-being were in sharp decline, that he had lost a lot of weight and had dark rings around his eyes. All I could think was how he is only a child put in what feels like a coffin. The prison is like a torture chamber.”

At least 94 Palestinians have died in Israeli detention since October 2023, according to Physicians for Human Rights-Israel. The organization attributes their deaths to torture and systemic denial of medical care.

This toll includes Walid Khalid Abdullah Ahmad, a 17-year-old from the town of Silwad, northeast of Ramallah, who was a cellmate of Ibrahim’s at Megiddo. Ahmad, a dual Brazilian Palestinian national, died in March 2025; Israeli authorities have yet to release his body to his family for burial.

“An autopsy showed that Walid had died from medical neglect, extreme malnutrition, and complications compounded by the denial of lifesaving medical intervention,” said Quzmar of DCIP. Ahmad was the first known Palestinian child to die inside Israeli prisons since October 2023, “and we fear for the other children, who are isolated from the world, denied food, medical care, and even visits from the Red Cross,” Quzmar added. According to DCIP, Israeli military law allows for the detention and prosecution of Palestinian children as young as 12.

Quzmar, along with other human rights organizations and the United Nations, asserts that Israeli detention practices—including torture, sexual violence, and coercive interrogations—have intensified since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas led a surprise attack on Israel. In response, Israel began a yearslong war in the Gaza Strip that numerous entities, including the U.N., human rights groups, and legal experts, have called a genocide.

The IPS said it “operates in accordance with the law and under the supervision of official oversight bodies” and that “all inmates are held according to legal procedures, and their rights including access to food, medical care, and adequate living conditions are upheld by professionally trained staff.”

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The Ibrahim family’s local representative in Florida, Republican Mike Haridopolos, offered them little assistance after his son’s detention, Zaher Ibrahim said; the same went for Sens. Rick Scott and Ashley Moody, Gov. Ron DeSantis, and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is himself from Florida.

But Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen took up Ibrahim’s case, meeting with his father during a visit to Ramallah last August. It was also Van Hollen, along with Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley and Florida Reps. Kathy Castor and Maxwell Frost, who spearheaded lawmakers’ October 2025 letter to the State Department, writing that it had “no higher priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens abroad.”

In a statement to Foreign Policy, a State Department spokesperson did not address why it took months to secure Ibrahim’s release, despite Israel being a staunch U.S. ally. “Throughout Mohammed Ibrahim’s incarceration, the embassy team in Israel and State Department in Washington worked tirelessly on his behalf through regular and high-level engagement with the government of Israel and provided continuous consular assistance to Mohammed and his family,” the statement read.

Tragedy weighed heavily on Ibrahim’s family throughout the teen’s detention. During those months, his 20-year-old cousin, Sayfollah Musallet—also a U.S. citizen—was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. Although U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee urged Israel to “aggressively investigate” the killing, authorities have made no arrests, reflecting a long-standing pattern in which settler attacks on Palestinians largely go unpunished.

Analysts and rights advocates say Ibrahim’s ordeal highlights the United States’ inconsistent approach toward its citizens in Israel-Palestine. Washington had acted swiftly on behalf of Israeli Americans at risk, including by lobbying for the release of Edan Alexander, a U.S. citizen serving in the Israeli army whom Hamas captured during its Oct. 7, 2023, attack. Alexander was freed last May in a bid by Hamas to revive cease-fire negotiations.

According to Ammar Jumhour, a Palestinian academic and political analyst based in Ramallah, Ibrahim’s case shows that there are limited privileges to holding U.S. citizenship when you’re also Palestinian.

The “plight of Palestinian Americans facing violence or unlawful detention receives far less urgency” in Washington, Jumhour said. “If anything, Israel deliberately goes after Palestinian Americans to push them out of the West Bank and ensure they never come back.”

In prison, Israeli soldiers knew that Ibrahim was American. “It didn’t make a difference,” he said. “I was mistreated just like everyone else.”

Ibrahim has now regained some of his lost weight and is trying to get a better night’s sleep. Between visiting family and friends, he obtained his learner’s permit and continues to help run his family’s ice cream shop.