Israel has arrested Palestinian women’s footballer Halawani

Israeli authorities on Wednesday extended the detention of a Palestinian women’s national football team player after she was summoned for questioning in Jerusalem, Palestinian officials said.

The Palestinian Football Association (PFA) denounced the prolonged detention of 20-year-old Rand Halawani, who was arrested on Tuesday evening.

A statement said Halawani’s arrest and that of a former national team player «was not an isolated incident, but part of a well-documented pattern of systematic attacks on Palestinian athletes that continues without accountability.»

According to the Palestinian Governorate for Jerusalem, an Israeli court extended Halawani’s detention until Friday.

The Israeli army also arrested former national footballer Natalie Abu Diyeh, a student at Birzeit University, as well as three other young Palestinian women in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday.

The military said in a statement that the four women were suspected of “promoting terrorist activities and additional terrorist activities.”

Birzeit University denounced the arrests as part of Israel’s «systematic policy targeting Palestinian education and the right of students to continue their academic journey.»

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Bishop Imad Haddad of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, to which Natalie Abu Diyeh belonged, called for her release.

“We are deeply shocked and shocked by this news, but also by the news that her family does not yet know where she has been taken,” Haddad said in a statement on Tuesday.

According to the Prisoners Club, the main prisoner rights association in the Palestinian territories, 89 Palestinian women are currently in Israeli prisons, including three minors and three pregnant women.

The Palestinian Authority-affiliated Prisoners Club announced at the end of May that more than 9,400 Palestinians were in Israeli prisons, including Palestinian citizens of Israel, also known as Arab Israelis.

Published on June 3, 2026