<\/p>\n
Dana Joudeh was<\/span> in shackles when she found out she was pregnant.<\/p>\n The 35-year-old from the West Bank city of Nablus was newly married and had just spent her first night in an Israeli prison. Israeli forces had arrested her without charges and put her under administrative detention<\/a>, an arbitrary condition for holding Palestinians hostage<\/a>. She lost consciousness in front of Israeli soldiers at Sharon Prison, a temporary detention facility in the city of Netanya, and they took her to a hospital blindfolded. There, with her hands and feet bound in chains, she was given a pregnancy test that came back positive.<\/p>\n Joudeh would never get to experience the joys and travails of pregnancy outside of prison. She was in Israeli custody from the moment she found out, until she gave birth.<\/p>\n Like Joudeh, pregnant Palestinian women arrested by Israeli security forces since October 7, 2023, are forced to endure a physically and medically complex process in conditions characterized by inadequate access to food, family visits, and medicine, as well as frequent reports of violence.<\/p>\n The total number of pregnancies in custody among the hundreds of women seized since October 7 is unknown, but\u00a0Joudeh is only the second documented example of a woman who gave birth while under Israeli detention in nearly 17 years, according to Palestinian prisoners\u2019 rights advocates. Many cases, advocates say, may have gone unreported.<\/p>\n The Intercept spoke to Joudeh through her sister, Maram, who sat with Joudeh by her side while sharing a detailed account of her sister\u2019s six-month pregnancy, which ended in a premature cesarean section.<\/p>\n Corroborated by statements and reports published by the Palestinian Prisoners\u2019 Society and the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, among others, Joudeh\u2019s story offers a glimpse into what it\u2019s like to go through pregnancy while locked in Israel\u2019s prison system, where she struggled to obtain basic prenatal care and relied on other prisoners to share their already limited food.<\/p>\n \u201cShe went through every kind of suffering in there,\u201d Maram said.<\/p>\n Israeli forces used sound grenades inside the prison, according to Joudeh\u2019s family and her lawyer, Hassan Abbadi, who provides volunteer legal support for detained Palestinians. They said soldiers would force the women to lie face down on the floor.<\/p>\n \u201cFemale prisoners are subjected to all forms of violence and are deprived of the most basic rights,\u201d said Abbadi, who regularly visits Palestinian women in Israeli prisons. He described shortages of underwear, attacks by police dogs, and strip searches, among other forms of mistreatment.<\/p>\n Joudeh\u2019s pregnancy unfolded against a broader surge in Israeli arrests<\/a> and violence across the occupied Palestinian territories. As of September, Israel was holding roughly 9,350 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, including 90 women and more than 350 children, according to Palestinian prisoners\u2019 organizations. More than 3,100 of them are being held under administrative detention, without charge or trial<\/a>.<\/p>\n For Joudeh, who was transferred to Damon Prison in Haifa soon after discovering she was pregnant, there was little effort to make accommodations for her pregnancy. According to Maram and Abbadi, the food was scarce and of poor quality, consisting usually of a slice of toast and lentils, chickpeas, or hummus. Sometimes, the prisoners received a few olives, and the other women incarcerated with Joudeh would offer a part of their own meager portions and give it to her.<\/p>\n In a small cell she shared with 13 other women, she discussed baby names with Manar Karaja, another detainee who was pregnant at the same time. According to Amany Sarahneh, the media director of the Palestinian Prisoners\u2019 Society, Karaja was still pregnant and still in Israeli detention as of October 6.<\/p>\n As her pregnancy progressed, Joudeh grew increasingly worried about her baby. She repeatedly asked for medical tests to make sure that both she and the fetus were healthy, Maram said, but her requests were refused.<\/p>\n \u201cI would reassure myself by the baby\u2019s heartbeat, and later, when I started feeling her move,\u201d Maram relayed on behalf of her sister, who sat next to her at Maram\u2019s home in Ramallah. \u201cI needed vitamins and folic acid, but they refused to give them to me.\u201d<\/p>\n In response to outreach from The Intercept, a spokesperson for the Israeli military directed queries to the Israel Prison Service. An Israel Prison Service spokesperson said the agency could not comment on individual detainees\u2019 cases, but described a detailed list of Joudeh\u2019s experiences as \u201cfalse.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Palestinian women have<\/span> faced pregnancy and childbirth inside Israeli prisons for decades, often under harsh conditions and with limited medical care. The first documented Palestinian woman to give birth in Israeli custody was Zakia Shammout, who delivered her daughter Nadia in 1972 at Neve Tirza prison in Ramla, assisted by fellow prisoners. The last documented case before the start of Israel\u2019s ongoing genocide was Fatima al-Zaq, who gave birth to her son Youssef in prison in 2008<\/a>; the 17-year-old was killed in July 2025 after an Israeli drone hit his family\u2019s apartment on Al-Thawra Street, in central Gaza City.<\/p>\n In September 2025, Tahani Abu Samhan gave birth to her son Yahya while in Israeli custody. Then, a year later, there was Joudeh.<\/p>\n Joudeh suffered from debilitating headaches while pregnant, but basic pain relief was difficult to obtain. Prison authorities refused to give her Acamol, a common brand of acetaminophen, which is generally considered safe for use during pregnancy despite recent guidance to the contrary<\/a> from health officials in the U.S.<\/p>\n The other women found ways to help. One prisoner would sometimes pretend that she had a headache herself, ask for a painkiller, and secretly give the tablet to Joudeh.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was crying most of the time,\u201d Maram said.<\/p>\n By July, Joudeh had contracted scabies, a rash caused by highly contagious mites that results in severe itching and pain. The women were given single container of a topical treatment to share among the entire cell, and it wasn\u2019t enough for everyone who was infected. They resorted to mixing the treatment with chlorine to make it stretch further, Maram said.<\/p>\n Months into the pregnancy, Joudeh began suffering severe pain and bleeding. She was taken to the prison clinic, where she was told that her condition was stable and that there was no need to send her to a hospital. She learned she was carrying a girl.<\/p>\n By then six months pregnant, Joudeh was having her first medical examination since her positive test, Maram said. World Health Organization guidelines recommend that a pregnant person would have had at least three prenatal appointments by that point, though many doctors recommend more frequent visits to monitor the development of the fetus and identify potential complications. Joudeh had received none.<\/p>\n In response to detailed questions from The Intercept, an Israeli Prison Service spokesperson wrote in a statement, \u201cThe allegations described are false, entirely without factual basis, and form part of a broader campaign to defame the State of Israel and its lawful institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAll prisoners and detainees held by the Israel Prison Service are held in accordance with the law and receive the rights and care to which they are entitled,\u201d the spokesperson added, including medical care in accordance with Israeli standards. They wrote that the prison agency would not provide medical information specific to any particular detainee.<\/p>\n Israeli officials have shown an interest in following the most limited interpretation of the law. In an interview<\/a> last week, national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said prisoners \u201cwill not receive a single grain more than the legal minimum.\u201d He recalled making a monitoring visit to Ketziot prison because, he claimed, he\u2019d heard prisoners had received two extra olives on their plates.<\/p>\n Outside the prisons, access to prenatal and other medical care has been pulled further out of reach for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. By the end of 2025, the United Nations had documented<\/a> 925 Israeli checkpoints, road gates, and other movement obstacles<\/a> across the territory, restricting the movement<\/a> of 3.4 million Palestinians and making it harder to reach health services.\u00a0And in Gaza, where Israel keeps bombing despite the ceasefire <\/a>announced last October, the health system has been destroyed<\/a>, with severe shortages of basic necessities and a lack of functioning medical facilities making pregnancy particularly dangerous.<\/p>\n Around 50,000 women are pregnant in Gaza, according to UNFPA. One in 3 pregnancies are considered high-risk. Nearly 4,000 pregnancy losses were reported in the first half of 2026, three times the number recorded in the previous six months.<\/p>\n