PA security forces wage arrest campaign against Hamas cadres

The Palestinian security forces on Tuesday launched a campaign of arrests and summonses against Palestinian citizens and Hamas members in different West Bank areas.

In Bethlehem, men from the intelligence apparatus severely beat Sheikh Yousuf Al-Lahham, 35, as he was walking with his wife on Al-Quds street and took him to their headquarters.

The intelligence agency in Bethlehem summoned Lahham a few days ago and interrogated him over his participation in a prisoner solidarity festival organized several days earlier in Dheisheh refugee camp.

Lahham spent about 10 years in Israeli jails and was locked up in PA jails in the West Bank several times. He was also removed from his post as the imam of Dheisheh Mosque because of his affiliation with Hamas.

In Nablus, the PA preventive security forces kidnapped Al-Quds university student Osaid Rayhan. Another student from the same university called Ala Ghanem, an ex-detainee in PA jails, was also detained by Israeli troops in coordination with the PA security forces.

The same security agency also kidnapped a 30-year old young man called Yousuf Zaqout, who works as a volunteer muezzin in the new mosque east of Tulkarem city. He is an ex-detainee in PA and Israeli jails.

Another man working as an engineer was also kidnapped in Tulkarem at the pretext of his involvement in organizing an event in solidarity with prisoners.

In Tulkarem as well, the preventive security held a special court session chaired by three judges to prosecute Hamas official Fadi Al-Amouri for the same case he was imprisoned for in an Israeli jail five years ago.

In a related context, Tulkarem lawmaker Fathi Al-Qarawi slammed the acting Tulkarem governor Jamal Saeed for denying and covering political arrests against some Hamas cadres who participated recently in sit-ins and events in solidarity with hunger strikers in Israeli jails.

In a press release, MP Qarawi stated that the arrests and summonses for political reasons have never stopped for a moment and recently such arrests happened among some participants in prisoner solidarity activities.

“I have seen with my own eyes some security men chasing members of the Islamic student bloc at Birzeit university on Ramallah streets and some of them were run after and rounded up from the medical complex; something like that also happened in Al-Khalil…,” he affirmed.

“There are also summonses issued against some Tulkarem young men who attended a march last night [Monday] after the signing of a deal ending the hunger strike of prisoners and responding to their demands,” the lawmaker added.