After his release from an Israeli prison, Wael Masha rode on the shoulders of his friends through the streets of a West Bank refugee camp and then entered his home and kissed his mother’s feet.
Less than a year later, those friends carried the 18-year-old’s body through the same streets after Israeli forces killed him in an airstrike. They described him as an armed terrorist who posed a threat to the Israeli military.
Her journey was not unique: Masha is one of at least three Palestinians born in the Israeli-occupied West Bank who were arrested as teenagers, released during a brief ceasefire in the Gaza war last November, and then killed as Israeli military operations in the region intensified.
Israel says its raids and air strikes on the West Bank, which it has occupied since 1967, reflect the magnitude of the security threat it faces from Palestinian militants.
Her family and others like them say Israel is fueling the problem it claims to fight: It is arresting young people — Masha was 17 when she was detained — then mistreating them in custody, eventually prompting them to seek revenge.
There is no dispute that Masha took up “jihad” after his release and he knew where it would take him.
In his will he instructed his mother: “When you hear the news of my martyrdom, God willing, do not weep, but lament.”
While some memorial posters show Masha brandishing an automatic weapon, her mother remembers her differently.
“He loved studying and repairing computers and mobile phones,” Hanadi Masha told AFP amid photos of her smiling son at her family home in the Balata refugee camp, east of Nablus.
He said that perhaps this interest could have turned into a career.
But “after he came out of jail, he was haunted by what he saw inside”.
‘Shock’ behind bars
The impact of nearly a year of war in Gaza has reached the West Bank, where the health ministry says at least 680 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers since a Hamas offensive on October 7.
Israeli officials say 24 Israelis, including soldiers, were killed in Palestinian attacks during the same period.
Even before the war, Israeli arrests of Palestinian men were common, including the detention of Masha in November 2022.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group says at least 250 Palestinians under the age of 18 are currently in Israeli custody.
“The occupation government does not hesitate to arrest children under the age of 18 … The mass arrests have nothing to do with any armed action,” said Hilmi al-Araj of the Palestinian civil society group Hurriyet.
Israeli authorities took Masha to Megiddo Prison in northern Israel, charged her with charges that her family was never told about, and sentenced her to two and a half years in prison.
His surprise release came during a week-long ceasefire in Gaza in November 2023, the only ceasefire of the war so far, during which Palestinian militants released 105 hostages they had taken on October 7, including Israelis, in exchange for the release of 240 Palestinians held in Israeli jails.
After coming out, Masha recounted a variety of abuses she had faced, such as being instructed to kiss the Israeli flag, and being burned with cigarette butts.
His father, Bilal, said the experience was a “huge shock” that “completely changed things” for him.
He said, “My son came in as a cub and came out as a lion.”
‘Prime of life’
Israel has not disclosed the exact circumstances of Masha’s death, and his parents say they do not know what he was doing when he was killed in an Israeli attack on August 15.
All they know is that a day before the attack, Masha said she received a threatening phone call from an Israeli official warning her: “Now it’s your turn.”
The details are clearer in the case of Tariq Daoud, a second Palestinian teenager who was detained alongside Masha and released on the same day of the November ceasefire.
Like Masha, Daoud also said he was beaten in Megiddo prison, his brother Khaled told AFP at the family home in Qalqiliyah, where children wear necklaces bearing his face.
Khalid said the abuse led to false confessions being extracted from Tariq (he was 16 when arrested), including charges against him for possessing illegal guns and attempting to make explosives.
Khalid said the imprisonment “shattered all his ambitions”, including his desire to become an engineer or a doctor.
Instead, he joined Hamas’ armed wing.
Both Khaled and the Israeli military reported that the same week Masha was killed, Tariq shot an Israeli settler in Azzun, east of Qalqiliya, and was killed by Israeli soldiers on the spot.
Israeli authorities have not yet released his body, but Khaled still comes every day to water the flowers at his plot in the Qalqiliya cemetery.
“I go there because I feel his presence there,” Khalid said.
At the Balata camp, Masha’s mother Hanadi has found her own ways to honour her son, talking about him to his four younger siblings and stroking photographs of his beard – just as she used to playfully greet him when he was alive.
Shortly after Masha’s death, he was informed by the institute where he was taking classes that he had been awarded a certificate in mobile phone repair and cyber security.
His mother attended the graduation ceremony on his behalf.
“He was a young man in the prime of his life,” she told AFP, weeping.
The time spent behind bars “planted the idea of resistance in his mind.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
