By Qais Abu Samra
RAMALLAH (AA): The Israeli army arrested on Monday a Palestinian parliamentarian in the West Bank city of Salfit.
According to eyewitnesses, the Israeli forces raided Nasser Abdel Gawad’s residence and arrested him.
Palestinian MP Fathi al-Qaraawi of the Hamas-affiliated Change and Reform bloc said continuous arrests of deputies of the Palestinian Legislative Council who are entitled to parliamentary immunity is a flagrant violation of international law.
“Israel rejected the results of the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006 and arrested all Hamas deputies (in the West Bank including Jerusalem) and continues to punish the Palestinian people for this by arresting the group’s deputies,” al-Qaraawi said.
The Change and Reform bloc won the 2006 Palestinian elections with an overwhelming majority.
Al-Qaraawi added the arrest is an attempt to block opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation military issued an order extending the arbitrary administrative detention of Palestinian parliamentarian and national leader Khalida Jarrar for an additional six months on Wednesday, 27 December 2017, four days before her detention was to expire. Jarrar was seized by occupation soldiers who invaded her home in El-Bireh on 2 July 2017. A well-known Palestinian leader, Jarrar is a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, head of its Prisoners’ Committee and Vice-Chair of the Board of Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association.
Jarrar is one of 11 Palestinian parliamentarians imprisoned by the Israeli occupation, most of them jailed – like her – without charge or trial under administrative detention. She is one of three Palestinian women currently held in administrative detention, along with Khadija Ruba’i and journalist Bushra al-Tawil. There are a total of over 450 Palestinians imprisoned without charge or trial under administrative detention and over 6,100 total Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails.
Administrative detention is an artifact of the British colonial mandate over Palestine that allows the Israeli military to arbitrarily imprison Palestinians with no charge and no trial. It is frequently used to target community leaders like Jarrar, and its widespread and systematic use stands in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The latest arrest raises the number of jailed Palestinian deputies to 11.
Additional report from Imemc.org
[Photo: Khalida Jarrar, Palestinian MP. Photo by Zaher333/Creative commons]
