IOF soldiers detain Palestinian MP

[ 18/10/2010 - 09:14 AM ]

AL-KHALIL, (PIC)-- Israeli occupation forces (IOF) broke into the home of Palestinian MP Hatem Qufaisha south of Al-Khalil city before dawn Monday and took him away, his family said. The family members told the PIC reporter that an IOF unit encircled the home of Dr. Qufaisha at 0100 am Monday and arrested him after allowing him to change his clothes. The Israeli occupation authority (IOA) had released the MP from custody in November 2009 after more than a year and a half in administrative detention. Qufaisha was arrested three times at the hands of the IOF during the current parliament's tenure and was held in IOA custody for 100 months on aggregate mostly in administrative detention without charge or trial. Qufaisha is a well-known social and political figure in Al-Khalil. His brother Subhi was targeted by militias of the PA in Ramallah and by the IOF. Subhi is currently held in the IOA Ofer prison serving a three-month administrative detention since mid September. The international campaign to release kidnapped deputies denounced the detention of Qufaisha and called for an international decision to bridle the IOA and its unprecedented acts in history of world parliaments. ---------- Israel continues political detention campaign   Published yesterday (updated) 18/10/2010 12:36   BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- 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.