JERUSALEM, Saturday, July 6, 2024 (WAFA) – Israeli occupation forces Saturday evening assaulted and detained a Fatah official from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya, according to local sources.
They said that the occupation forces showed up at the house of Yasser Darwish, a member of Fatah Revolutionary Council, wreaked havoc inside and brutally beat his two sons.
The heavily armed soldiers opened rubber-coated steel bullets towards Darwish’s sons, injuring at least one of them, and assaulted his wife before handcuffing and detaining him.
The casualty was transferred to a hospital for treatment, according to the Wadi Hilweh Information Center.
For the residents of Issawiya, a Palestinian neighbourhood of some 20,000, Israeli army vehicles have become an everyday reality on the neighbourhood streets, while the occupation forces’ drones fly above – surveilling each move of the neighbourhood’s residents.
Nestled in the hills of East Jerusalem, the neighbourhood is plagued by poor infrastructure, residents are constantly harassed by the Israeli police and anyone, including children, run the risk of arbitrary arrest.
Hostile armed soldiers searchlights pierce residents’ homes as Israeli officers conduct raids in the dead of night, breaking into homes and arresting residents.
While the occupation authorities claim raids into the neighbourhood are intended to maintain “law and order”, residents and human rights groups vigorously reiterate that the raids themselves seem intended to provoke confrontations and have created an atmosphere of terror, with parents afraid to let their children play outside.
Rights groups have long pointed out that Israel’s discriminatory policies in East Jerusalem – which include routine home demolitions, discriminatory allocation of building permits, and the forceful expulsions of Palestinians from their homes for the benefit of Israeli colonial settlements – are aimed at driving out Palestinians from the city.
With over 70 percent of Palestinian families in occupied East Jerusalem living below the poverty line, if life becomes too expensive, they have little choice but to move to congested Jerusalem neighbourhoods on the other side of Israel’s separation wall or into the West Bank.
After Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, Palestinians were not given Israeli citizenship, but were instead issued permanent residency permits, which Israel can revoke for a variety of reasons, including insufficient loyalty to the occupation state.
K.F.
