In the early hours of April 7, 2024, Israeli forces stormed the homes of 25-year-old Layan Kayed in Ramallah and 23-year-old Layan Nasir in Birzeit, both located in the occupied West Bank. The two women were arrested at gunpoint and placed in “administrative detention” without charges.

Nasir’s family said that the soldiers offered no explanation or indication of what charges were being brought against her. They didn’t need to: Under “administrative detention,” Israeli authorities can arrest a person even before any crime has been committed, and without revealing the nature of the allegations. Once arrested in this way, a prisoner can be held in administrative detention in six-month stints that can be renewed again and again without charge or trial. At the beginning of April 2025, there were almost 3,500 Palestinians held in administrative detention, according to Addameer, a Ramallah-based nongovernmental organization that supports Palestinian political prisoners. Among these thousands are minors, journalists, activists and human rights defenders.

Near the end of April 2024, the Israeli military told international media that Nasir had been arrested based on intelligence that suggested she “poses a security threat.” No further details were given to her family. Kayed and Nasir were held in administrative detention without charge in Damon Prison, across the border in Israel, until their release eight months later.

According to Addameer and the United Kingdom-based organization Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, both women had previously been arrested and detained when they were students at Birzeit University — Kayed in 2020 and Nasir in 2021. Alongside other female university students, they had been charged with participating in and affiliating with a student group that Israel had deemed a terrorist organization.

Since Hamas’ terrorist attacks on October 7, 2023, Palestinians in the West Bank like Kayed and Nasir have been targeted by Israel’s heightened militarization and subjected to increased surveillance, mass arrests and abuse. In April 2024, the Palestinian Authority’s Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs said that Israeli raids on homes of former female detainees in the West Bank have become a daily occurrence as part of a strategy of retaliation and revenge against women and girls. The Israel Defense Forces denies this claim. An IDF spokesperson told me that there has been “a significant increase in terrorist attacks” in the West Bank since October 7 and that the IDF has been conducting “counter-terrorism operations against the Hamas terrorist organization, to protect the State of Israel.” The spokesperson emphasized that the IDF “operates in a targeted and precise manner” and does not “seek to obstruct the daily lives of Palestinian civilians.”