AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

In the occupied West Bank, Palestinian human rights defender Issa Amro was detained at a military base by Israeli soldiers for seven hours Friday. Amro, the founder of the Hebron-based group Youth Against Settlements, was detained after he went to help a Palestinian family who he says had been attacked by armed settlers at their farmhouse outside Hebron. He says Israeli soldiers arrived, but instead of protecting the family, they arrested the father and forced the mother and children to remain inside their vehicle. Amro himself was also targeted. Settlers pointed guns at him, threatened to shoot him. When the soldiers arrived, they handcuffed, blindfolded and detained not the settlers, but him.

Amro Issa is one of the most prominent Palestinian human rights defenders in the West Bank. He received the Right Livelihood Award in 2024, known as the Alternative Nobel. That same year, he and Israeli activist Maoz Inon were named laureates of the Franco-German Prize for Human Rights and the Rule of Law. Issa Amro joins us from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

Issa Amro, welcome back to Democracy Now! Explain what happened to you on Friday. We got an alert soon after you were taken. The significance of what you were trying to document, and then what happened?

ISSA AMRO: Thank you, Amy.

What happened to me is happening to many Palestinian families and many Palestinian human rights defenders and many Palestinian journalists, that the Israeli settlers collaborate and coordinate their attacks toward Palestinian families and Palestinian journalists and Palestinian activists. Then, the army continue the attack and make it hard for them.

This is an example of what is the story on the ground now, that the Palestinian family, they were in their land, you know, trying to farm, trying to take care of their land near an Israeli illegal outpost. So, it’s illegal even according to the Israeli law. Illegal settlers, armed, came to terrify the family, terrorize the family, intimidate the family by using violence, using the dogs, in pointing the gun at the family. There were four children and the mother and the father, and they were not a threat to the settlers or to the occupation. The army came after, ill-treated the mother and the father. And they detained, outside the law, the father, and they took him away. And we lost connection with the family. The family was talking to me. I was explaining to them their legal rights and what they were supposed to do.

Then, I went to help the family, to help the children, to help the mother, who was locked in the car, and the car key was confiscated by the Israeli soldiers. I became the victim of the same settlers who came to do the same thing to me, to point the gun at me, to hit me, to take my ID against the law, and then the soldiers to come to help the settlers, to not allow me document what happened to this family. And they just, you know, used violence and aggression toward me to intimidate me, not to help this family or other families, because they don’t want the world to know. They don’t know — they don’t want us to document this kind of violation. They don’t want us to tell everybody in the world that this kind of settler terror and settler violence is sponsored by the Israeli government. It’s a state-sponsored violence and terror toward the Palestinian families and coordinated with the Israeli military in the Occupied Territories, and especially in the West Bank and especially in Area C.

So, they took me, and they throw me as a sheep to the back of a military Hummer, after they made their dog attack me and bite me, and they hit me, and they pushed me. And for sure, they intimidated me to be killed and be tortured. And it was very hard experience. For seven hours, I was really in a very bad situation, under the cold, beaten, hit and, you know, hit. They were, you know, even rejoicing. They were celebrating, taking videos and selfies and sending it to their WhatsApp groups and Telegram groups, you know, to celebrate detaining and torturing a Palestinian human rights defender and, for sure, for not allowing a Palestinian family to have access to their land.

We are talking about 1 million — more than 1 million dunams under the control of the Israeli settlers in the West Bank now. The Israeli settlers established more than 200 new outposts in the West Bank in the last three years and a half. They opened 200 — more than 200 kilometer new roads in a Palestinian private land. The Israeli government advanced more than 40,000 new settlement units they are going to build in E1 area. Around 180 — 120 Palestinian families and communities, they were expelled, evicted from their land, from their communities, from their villages, because of this kind of pattern and this kind of strategies and tactics to terrify the families, to isolate the families. In the West Bank, we live in a jail. We live in ghettos. It’s a de facto annexation. Palestine is disappearing, because the Israeli settlements are everywhere. The Israeli closure is everywhere. We have around 950 new closed roads, closed communities. We are not connected to each other. The Israeli government declared 26 new — you know, 26,000 new land, you know, to the Israel as a state land. That’s half of what they declared in the last 35 years almost. This is what’s going on.

The Israeli government, too, allocated more than 19 billion shekel to settlements, 7 billion shekels to roads, 6 billion shekels to do development for the new settlements, because they are — they started and established more than 100 new settlements, and they, among them, legalizing the illegal outposts. All the settlements are illegal, but even in Israel there are outposts and settlements, 2.75 billion allocated to new farms where Israeli settlers attack Palestinians. The settlers, their farms control more than 18% of the West Bank. It’s more than Area A. You know, it’s more than the size of — 

AMY GOODMAN: Issa — 

ISSA AMRO: — Area A.

AMY GOODMAN: Issa — 

ISSA AMRO: One billion for settler tourism. Yes, please, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Issa, very quickly. We just have a minute. You told them you had a metal shoulder, and they just let you be in the back of the — what was it? A Humvee? — as you were slamming against the different walls while they were driving? And do you think they freed you because of the international outcry? Warnings came out almost immediately after you were taken.

ISSA AMRO: Yes, Amy. Thank you, and thanks to Democracy Now! And thanks to all the people who stood with me and started an international campaign to make my detention costly. I hope this kind of campaigns continue to other Palestinians.

I told them that I have a shoulder injury, and I’m not supposed to be, you know, handcuffed to the back or blindfolded in that way. But I was mistreated. I was beaten. I was ill-treated. And then, until now, I suffer from physical pain. And, you know, psychologically, I’m not the same as before Friday. It’s not the first time. It’s not the last time.

We have to keep working to make occupation, apartheid costly and make this kind of human rights violations costly for the offenders, and to support Palestinian grassroots human rights organization and groups to continue documentation, to continue working — 

AMY GOODMAN: Issa, we have to leave it there.

ISSA AMRO: — against the Israeli occupation peacefully — 

AMY GOODMAN: I thank you — 

ISSA AMRO: — and using nonviolent resistance.

AMY GOODMAN: I thank you so much for being with us, Issa Amro, prominent Palestinian human rights defender, now leads the American charity Friends of Hebron, Friday detained by the Israeli military.

That does it for our show. A happy birthday to Carlos Pareja! I’m Amy Goodman.