Amnesty calls for release of Burin farmer Ghassan Najjar

The Israeli military arrested Ghassan Najjar before dawn on Oct. 27, in Burin, a Palestinian village south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank. He is now held in the Huwara military detention facility, according to Amnesty International.

On Nov. 5 the rights group called for his immediate release. Najjar, 36, coordinates the Sumoud network, which supports farmers and shepherds, and works with Burin's Land and Farming Agricultural Cooperative. Amnesty says Israeli intelligence agents had explicitly threatened to arrest him if he did not stop his activism, and that he was detained for protecting the olive harvest.

A military interrogator told his lawyer that Najjar is likely to be placed in administrative detention, Amnesty said. The procedure lets Israel hold Palestinians without charge or trial; Amnesty calls it a tactic used “to punish and persecute Palestinians by holding them indefinitely.”

It would not be his first time. Najjar has already spent nearly a decade in Israeli jails, mostly in administrative detention, Amnesty says. He was first arrested at fifteen.

Israeli authorities must immediately release Ghassan Najjar who was arrested solely because of his peaceful activism …— Amnesty International statement, Nov. 5, 2026