Acclaimed poet arrested in Gaza: reports

Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian-born poet, was arrested by Israeli authorities in the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip before later being released.

Attorney Diana Buttu told The Washington Post on Monday that Toha was arrested by Israeli officials when he, along with his family, were attempting to evacuate southern Gaza. Toha was arrested at a checkpoint along with about 200 other people, Buttu said.

Toha recently returned to his home country after completing his graduate studies in the U.S., according to the Post. 

Buttu also said that Toha has been in contact with the U.S. government in the past weeks in an effort to gain the approval to evacuate his family from the war-torn strip. 

One of Toha’s three children, Mostafa, 3, was born in the U.S. and is a U.S. citizen, the Post reported. 

“Update on Mosab Abu Toha: he has been released by the Israeli army,” Buttu wrote in an X post. “Israeli soldiers beat him and he getting medical treatment now and with his family.”

“Mosab was taken to an Israeli prison in the Naqab where he was interrogated and beaten along with more than 200 others,” Buttu added. 

In a statement to The Hill, the Israel Defense Forces said, “During IDF operations in the Gaza Strip, there was intelligence indicating of a number of interactions between several civilians and terror organizations inside the Gaza Strip.”

“The civilians, among them Mosab Abu Toha, were taken into questioning. After the questioning he was released,” the IDF added.

The ordeal comes as Toha, 30, gained acclaim in recent years for his work as a poet, having his work published in major publications such as The New Yorker and The New York Times. 

Toha, who founded an English-language library in the territory, was also named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Awards earlier this year for his 2022 collection, “Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza.”

The New Yorker, which published Toha’s first-person essay earlier this month about daily life in the besieged territory of Gaza, issued a statement in its daily newsletter calling for his safe return to the U.S., the Post noted. 

“The Palestinian poet @MosabAbuToha lives with his wife and three children in Gaza. Over the weekend, Israeli forces reportedly detained Abu Toha in central Gaza,” the publication wrote in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “The New Yorker joins other organizations in calling for his safe return.”

It’s been a month since Hamas’s surprise attack against Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,200 people and the taking of around 240 hostages.

In response, Israel has launched a series of airstrikes and a ground invasion in Gaza, resulting in the death of at least 13,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.

Updated at 3:53 pm on Nov. 22.