JERUSALEM, November 21, 2017 (WAFA) – Israeli police detained on Tuesday two senior Fatah members in East Jerusalem, seven women, and a census official in addition to several others during early morning raids at their homes, according to several sources.
The Wadi Hilweh Information Center, which is based in East Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood, said, based on reports from Amjad Abu Assab, head of the committee of families of Palestinian prisoners from East Jerusalem in Israeli jails, that police detained Hatem Abdul Qadder, who is in charge of the Jerusalem file in the movement which is headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, and Shadi Mtour, secretary of the movement’s East Jerusalem branch.
The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society also said police detained other activists in East Jerusalem, including Fawzi Shaban, head of the Silwan Families Committee, and his daughter Ghayda, and Musab Abbas, .
Police also detained Zuheir Rajabi, after police assaulted local youngsters in Silwan, who included Rajabi’s son, Hamza, with pepper spray. The youngsters required hospitalization following the police assault.
The center said also that police raided the African community quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City and detained two women, identified as Rowa Bilaleh and Mais Firawi, and a man identified as Ali Firawi. Another man, identified as Abdul Mutaleb Abu Sbeih, was detained from another location in the Old City.
Police also detained Dima Adnan Natsheh, 18, from her Beit Hanina home in northern Jerusalem, and Rawn Mousa Mustafa and her brother Arafat from Issawiya neighborhood.
The PPS said police detained two other women in East Jerusalem identified as Aseel Hassouneh and Suheir Salhi.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces detained Issam Khatib from his home in the village of Hizma, northeast of Jerusalem. Khatib is in charge of the census program in Jerusalem of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).
The PCBS is currently carrying out a nation-wide census in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including in occupied East Jerusalem where more than 350,000 Palestinians live. Israel does not allow official Palestinian activity in East Jerusalem, which it illegally annexed following its occupation of the city in the 1967 war.
M.K.
