Two years after a Palestinian Christian prisoner in the Negev desert requested a Bible and a visit from his priest, Israeli prison officials have agreed to provide Scripture but not the clergy visit, sources said.
Rami Saleh, director of Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (JLAC), told Christian Daily International that the family of detainee Rami Rizq Fadayel, of Ramallah, asked his office to help him. After months of intervention, JLAC has finally received approval to make a Bible available to Fadayel, Saleh said.
“We began our legal intervention back in December 2025, making two requests: access to the Holy Bible and access to a priest,” Saleh said. “According to the Catholic faith, a Christian is to be administered the sacrament by an ordained priest and is to be allowed a confession to a priest at least once a year.”
Saleh said that Nafha Prison, a high-security Israeli prison also known as Bir al-Saba Prison in the Negev about 200 kilometers from Jerusalem, had refused both requests. The JLAC approached prison authorities, who stated on Monday (April 20) that they would allow the Bible but not the priest’s visit.
“All prisoners have had access to their religious books, but since October 7th, 2023, all were confiscated,” Saleh said. “The Islamic Quran was returned to prisoners after some time, but not the Bible.”
Saleh noted that National Prison Services made many requirements, including a signed request by the prisoner.
“We had to get his family to give a power of attorney for a lawyer to visit him and obtain his signature on the request for the Bible,” Saleh said.
JLAC is preparing to appeal the decision banning a visit by a priest.
Mona Fadayel, the inmate’s mother, told Christian Daily International that she is happy that he will be able to get the Bible, although it has been more than two years since he has been asking for one.
“He is sitting with nothing to do; the Bible would help him closer to God,” she said. “He is alone, no one is allowed to visit except his lawyer once every 40 days, and I pay the lawyer NIS [New Israeli Shekels] 700 [$250]. I have not been allowed to visit him since his arrest or even talk on the phone to him. Nor has anyone else, including his priest, been allowed to visit.”
Her son has requested she hire an attorney from Israel who is able to appeal to the Israeli High Court, which would require payment of 6,000 New Israeli Shekels ($2,000) to represent him, she said.
Mona Fadayel noted that he has been detained administratively without charge or trial.
“Usually, this is a six-month detention, and it is renewed once or twice,” she said. “He has been held for two years and four months without any charge or trial.”
She said that another Palestinian who was arrested along with him was released, but they extended her son’s detention for another four months.
“Maybe it is because he [Rami] was sent to solitary confinement after discovering he had a pen with him,” Fadayel said.
It is not clear if permission to have a Bible will be granted to other Christians, Saleh said.
“It is not clear if we will have to make a special legal appeal for every case, or if the decision of the National Prison Services will apply to all Palestinian Christian prisoners.”
Two other Palestinian Christian prisoners, Samer Arabid and Johnny Qaqish, have also requested Bibles, he said.
Since June of 2024, the prison administration had stalled the delivery of a Bible to Rami Fadayel, who was taken captive in December 2023, wrote Hind Shraydeh, a Jerusalem journalist specializing in issues related to Palestinian Christians, in Milhilard.org in April 2025.
Rami Fayadel spent “over two years in arbitrary imprisonment, most of it under administrative detention – a detention without charge or trial,” Shraydeh reported. “Since his most recent arrest, the occupation has renewed Rami’s administrative detention order five consecutive times – including on the eve of Christmas 2024. Just two days after that detention renewal, death struck a cruel blow: Rami’s father passed away.”
Bishop William Shomali of the Jerusalem Latin Patriarchate affirmed to CDI that getting a Bible to a prisoner and visiting him is part of Christian belief.
“The Lord Jesus specifically talked about the need to visit prisoners,” Bishop Shomali said. “In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus emphasizes that visiting prisoners is a direct act of service to Him. He identifies with the ‘least of these,’ stating that helping – or neglecting – those in prison is equivalent to doing so to Him.’
