On November 28, Israeli soldiers stopped my car at the Jaba checkpoint in the occupied West Bank and kidnapped me. I spent the following 253 days in detention without charge, without ever being told why this was happening to me.

That morning, I didn’t want to leave the house because my wife and my three-month-old son were suffering from the flu, but I could not postpone an English language exam I had to take as part of my application for an MA programme at a British university.

As I was making my way back, I called my wife to tell her that I was coming home and bringing food. I could hear the sound of my son crying in the background. His cries stayed in my head for the next eight months.

At the checkpoint, the Israeli soldiers took me out of the car, handcuffed me, blindfolded me and made me kneel for five hours inside a military camp. I was moved from camp to camp until I was eventually transferred to a detention centre in an illegal Jewish settlement in Hebron.

I was not permitted any contact with a lawyer or my family, despite my constant requests. It was only after two months of detention that I was finally able to speak with a lawyer and learned there were no charges against me. I was under administrative detention – a legal measure applied to the Palestinian population that allows the Israeli occupation forces to arbitrarily detain whoever they want.

This measure has been used heavily since October 7, 2023, as yet another means of collectively punishing Palestinians. As of this month, more than 3,300 Palestinians are still being held in Israeli prisons without trial or charges.

As an administrative detainee, I – like the rest of the 10,000 Palestinian political........

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