Published On 3/6/2026
Israeli police are detaining a player in the Palestinian women’s soccer team after she was summoned for investigation at one of their centers in Jerusalem, according to Palestinian officials.
The Palestinian Football Association stated that the Israeli police “arrested Rand Halawani (20 years old), a player in the women’s national team,” after she was summoned to Talpiot Police Station, west of Jerusalem.
The media office of the Jerusalem Governorate, which is based in the town of Al-Ram, north of Jerusalem, reported that Halwani was summoned on Tuesday for investigation, “before the occupation authorities arrested her and referred her to the court, which decided to extend her detention” until next Friday.
The French news agency did not receive an immediate response from the Israeli police regarding the reasons for Halwani’s detention.
Also on Tuesday, the Israeli army arrested Natalie Abu Dayyeh (21 years old), a former national team player and student in the media department at Birzeit University, following a raid on her place of residence north of Ramallah in the center of the occupied West Bank, according to the Football Association and the university.
Also, Birzeit University reported in a statement that the Israeli army arrested students Golan Abu Awad and Sama Safi, as well as graduate Laila Nael Khalil.
The army said in a statement early Tuesday that the four young women were “suspected and arrested after promoting hostile terrorist activities and engaging in other terrorism-related activities.”
The Palestinian Football Association said in a statement on Wednesday that the arrest of players Halwani and Abu Dayyeh is a “flagrant violation of all the values on which sport is based, and international laws and conventions.”
The International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) called for taking “concrete and immediate measures on the football scene to hold those responsible for these violations accountable, in line with the regulations that are supposed to apply to everyone without exception.”
Imad Haddad, Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, called on the Israeli authorities to immediately release Abu Dayyeh, noting in a statement that she is a member of the Reform Church in Beit Jala.
Haddad said: “We are extremely disturbed by the reality in which Natalie now finds herself among thousands of Palestinians in Israeli prisons without being charged or tried.”
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club announced that the number of female detainees in Israeli prisons had risen to 89, including three children, three pregnant women, and two cancer patients, noting that “the majority of them are detained in Damon Prison” in Haifa, northern Israel.
The club said in a statement: “Female prisoners are subjected to harsh detention conditions that include starvation, medical crimes, isolation, attacks, and humiliating searches, in addition to severe overcrowding inside the cells, as some of them are forced to sleep on the floor.”
Israel detains more than 9,400 Palestinians in its prisons, according to figures from the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club on the eve of Eid al-Adha late last month.
