RAMALLAH, Friday, April 3, 2020 (WAFA) – Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh today condemned the detention of the Palestinian Authority’s minister of Jerusalem affairs by Israeli police earlier today.

Shtayyeh condemned the arrest of Minister of Jerusalem Affairs Fadi Hidmi by Israeli police during an overnight raid into the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Suwaneh. His office circulated surveillance camera footage showing police searching his home with dogs. Police deliberately smashed the external and internal doors of al-Hidmi’s house and seized 10,000 shekels ($2,800). It was the fourth time he has been detained.

“Israel targets who work for Jerusalem, even at such critical moments as we work to save our people’s lives from COVID-19. This morning, its occupying forces arrested the Minister of Jerusalem Affairs, Fadi Al-Hidmi, after raiding his house. We demand his immediate release,” Shtayyeh tweeted.

Shtayyeh urged the World Health Organization to condemn Al-Hidmi’s arrest “as it constitutes an attack on the organization’s protocols in facing the pandemic,” Government Spokesman Ibrahim Milhem reported Shtayyeh as saying.

Meanwhile, the Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ministry also condemned Al-Hidmi’s arrest under these circumstances, as the government strives to save the Palestinian people’s lives from the novel coronavirus, as an extension of the Israeli occupation’s measures aimed at undermining official and popular Palestinian efforts to confront the coronavirus pandemic.

It also decried his arrest as arbitrary, which falls in line with the implementation of the US-touted Mideast ‘peace plan’, dubbed deal of the century, which is designed to force Palestinians into submission into perpetual Israeli dominance and consolidate the Israeli colonization and ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the Palestinian people.

K.F.