Aletho News

Israeli Occupation Forces Arrest Palestinian MP

Journalist also detained

Ma’an – 18/10/2010

BETHLEHEM — Israeli forces detained a Hamas-affiliated member of the Palestinian Legislative Council on Monday from the southern West Bank district of Hebron.

Hatem Qafaish, elected to the Palestinian parliament in 2006 with Hamas’ Change and Reform bloc, was detained after Israeli forces ransacked his home, a local source told Ma’an. The PLC member was detained on 6 November 2007 and placed under administrative detention until his release in 2009.

Palestinian journalist Raed Ash-Sharif, working with a local Hebron radio station, was also detained.

According to the Ad-Dameer Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights organization, Qafaish had been detained by Israel five times previous to his latest detention. He was elected to the PLC in January 2006 after campaigning from his prison cell.

Qafaish was also among the more than 400 activists Israel deported to Marj Al-Zuhur in southern Lebanon in December 1992. After returning to the West Bank in 1993, he chronicled his experience in exile in a series of articles in the Al-Quds newspaper. He intended to eventually to publish a memoir, but the manuscript was confiscated by Israeli prison guards.

There are six Hamas-affiliated PLC members in Israeli, detained shortly after the Islamist movement’s electoral victory. Following the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in June 2006 in a cross-border raid in Gaza, Israel launched a detention campaign targeting Hamas affiliated PLC members in a bid to secure the soldier’s release.

A second campaign was launched in 2009, after Israel, Hamas and a German mediator, failed to come to a prisoner swap deal under Ehud Olmert’s premiership. Many of those detained in the later campaign were handed down administrative detention sentences, according to a report issued in June, with others receiving prison terms. The majority were released shortly after.

Since the beginning of 2010, a number of Hamas PLC members were released, including Mohammad Abu Teir. Shortly after his release, Abu Teir was again detained, issued a revocation order for his Jerusalem residency rights, and handed down a deportation warrant. He is currently being remanded in custody until Israel’s Supreme Court hears his case.

Abu Teir is among three other elected Change and Reform parliamentarians who are faced with deportation from Jerusalem.

One lawyer told Ma’an that under all legal precedents, lawmakers are immune while sitting in office. Israel, the lawyer said, has violated this legal norm both by jailing Palestinian PLC members in the West Bank and passing laws within the Israeli Knesset removing Palestinian-Israeli members’ immunity under the pretense of spying for an enemy state.

Thirty-one detainees stood for the Palestinian general elections in January 2006, with 15 becoming members of the PLC.

October 18, 2010 - Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Illegal Occupation