Dr. Mazen al-Rantisi, 71, released

In a small but very important victory, Dr. Mazen al-Rantisi, 71, was released by the Israeli Occupation Forces on Sunday, October 2026, after nearly four months in detention. Dr. al-Rantisi is a Palestinian physician from Ramallah, known across the occupied West Bank as the "doctor of the poor" in recognition of his decades-long practice of waiving fees for patients who couldn't pay, supplying medicines and treating low-income Palestinians free of charge. He had no history of political activity and was a widely respected community figure.

Israeli border police arrested him in a pre-dawn raid on his home in the al-Tira neighbourhood of Ramallah on Sunday, 21 June 2026, without informing his family, and the arrest drew widespread condemnation. He was later indicted for chairing the board of the Union of Health Work Committees, a non-profit that provides medical care to thousands of Palestinians a year; human rights organisations describe the prosecution as criminalising the provision of healthcare and the civil society groups that make it possible.

In detention at Ofer prison he described, through a lawyer from the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, beatings by guards, severe overcrowding, squalid hygiene, food deprivation, medical neglect and food unfit to eat; his family said he has chronic illnesses and was denied his medication. The Prison Service called the claims untrue.

In a video recorded at the time of his release, Dr. al-Rantisi is seen to be gaunt and with visible signs of physical abuse. FIDH and the World Organisation Against Torture cite his case alongside Dr Dima Amin and Dr Hussam Abu Safiya as part of what they call Israel's systematic targeting of Palestinian health workers, a pattern the UN Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory also condemned in July 2026.

Recent Op-Ed by Board Member Geir Kjell Andersland
(First published in Altinget Løvebakken)

Israel’s inhumane treatment of Palestinian children must end

“Israel’s widespread, systematic, cruel and humiliating treatment of Palestinian children is a deliberate practice aimed at breaking down the children’s self-image and placing them in a permanent state of fear and insecurity,” writes the author.

Written by Geir Kjell Andersland
Lawyer, Chair of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (ICJ Norway), member of Palestinian Children in Israeli Military Prisons (PIM)

This is an opinion piece, and the content reflects the author’s views.

5 April was the Day of Solidarity with Palestinian Children.

Now Norway and the entire international community must take strong and effective action against Israel and demand that the country’s authorities put a stop to the gross violations against Palestinian children. Whatever one might otherwise think of Israel and Palestine, nothing can justify the abuse and torture that the Israeli authorities systematically inflict on children. The situation is so grave that those who remain silent are, in practice, consenting to these atrocities.

Last year, 17-year-old Walid Ahmed died after being starved to death in Israeli custody. The body returned to his family was without a single gram of fat and devoid of muscle mass.

For years, Israeli military authorities have arrested between 500 and 700 Palestinian children annually. Many are arrested for throwing stones at the military occupation forces, but many are also arrested arbitrarily or for taking part in demonstrations.

Trial of children in military courts

Israel’s abuses against Palestinian children have been documented in a series of reports by UNICEF, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, Save the Children, the Palestinian children’s rights organisation Defence Children International – Palestine (DCIP) and the Israeli organisations B’Tselem and Military Watch.

Israel’s abuses first came to public attention through a UNICEF report in 2013 on how Israel treated detained Palestinian children. In the same year, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child issued a scathing criticism of Israel on the same subject.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child reiterated and reinforced its criticism in a new report in 2024 and demanded that Israel immediately cease the use of violence and torture against children, stop using administrative detention and stop prosecuting children in military courts. Israel is the only country in the world that tries children in military courts, which are neither impartial nor independent.

Conditions have, if possible, become even worse following Hamas’s terrorist attack in October 2023.

Deliberate practice

There are currently around 350 children in Israeli captivity. Of these, nearly half – 180 children – are held in administrative detention, which entails indefinite detention without charge or trial.

  • The children are not given sufficient food and drink. They become malnourished and some are completely starved, close to death.

  • They are systematically subjected to torture and physical and psychological violence.

  • An increasing number are placed in small, isolated cells for shorter or longer periods. The use of solitary confinement cells is in itself torture, particularly when applied to children.

  • The children are denied access to necessary medical care.

  • Many are sent from the West Bank to serve prison sentences in Israel, which constitutes a gross violation of international law.

Israel’s widespread, systematic, cruel and humiliating treatment of Palestinian children is a deliberate practice aimed at breaking down the children’s self-image and placing them in a permanent state of fear and insecurity. The children are robbed of their childhood; many end up marginalised after release, and most struggle with trauma or other significant mental health issues. In this way,

Israel seeks to render the rising generations in Palestine pitiable and harmless.

The fact that Israel itself contributes to irreconcilable hatred towards the country does not seem to be taken particularly seriously by the authorities. But then again, it is part of Israel’s long-standing strategy to assume the role of victim and to describe all resistance and criticism as anti-Semitism or terrorism.

It is inconceivable – ethically, politically and legally – that Norway and the rest of the world simply allow this to happen without so much as raising their voices in protest.

It is inconceivable – ethically, politically and legally – that Norway and the rest of the world simply allow this to happen without so much as raising their voices in protest.

— Geir Kjell Andersland