“Extreme Power, Incredible Torment”: UK Bishops Condemn Israel’s Detention of Palestinian Christian Student Natalie Abu Dayyeh

LONDON / WEST BANK – Four Church of England bishops have broken their silence with unusual force, expressing “deep dismay and disquiet” over the arrest of a 21-year-old Palestinian Christian student in the West Bank. Natalie Abu Dayyeh, a student at Birzeit University, was detained on June 2 for allegedly “promoting terrorist activities”—a charge her supporters say remains vague and unsubstantiated. In a sharply worded letter to Dr. Imad Haddad, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, the bishops of Chelmsford, Gloucester, Norwich, and Southwark argued that Natalie’s detention violates Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which mandates that protected persons under occupation be detained within occupied territory. Dr. Haddad described Natalie as a “beloved youth in the church community” and said he was “incredibly disturbed” that she would now join thousands of Palestinians held in administrative detention—without charge or trial.

The bishops—Guli Francis-Dehqani, Rachel Treweek, Graham Usher, and Christopher Chessun—did not stop at sympathy. They issued a direct call to the Israeli government to “abolish its punitive practice of administrative detention, immediately release Natalie and all those detainees it presently holds, and strictly follow international law” in the occupied territories. Acknowledging that the exact circumstances of her arrest remain unclear, the bishops drew a painful parallel to the case of Layan Nasir, another Christian student released last month after her third imprisonment on similarly obscure charges. “Incarcerating people who have not been convicted or even charged with anything for lengthy periods of time, based on secret ‘evidence’ that they cannot challenge,” the bishops wrote, “is an extreme power and one that inflicts incredible torment and suffering on the detained and their family.” Assuring Natalie’s family of their prayers, the bishops vowed to raise the issue in the House of Lords. For a 21-year-old student caught in the machinery of occupation, those words may be the only light in a very dark cell.