Israel bans lawyer Shireen Issawi from working

Israeli occupation authorities have prevented renown Jerusalem lawyer Shireen Issawi from practicing her job, the Palestinian wrote on Facebook on Tuesday.

“The so-called [Israeli] Court of Appeal handed me an order preventing me from practicing in the legal professional for the rest of my life,” she wrote, adding: “Even where our livelihoods are concerned, they declare a racist war against us

She continued: “When the occupation intelligence services arrested me in 2010 and investigator shouted during the investigation asking: ‘How did they allow a vandal from a family of vandal become a lawyer? I will come after you until I ban you from work and the bar expels you.’”

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Shireen said that initially she was banned from practicing her work from 2011 until 2017 under the pretext of being sentenced to one year in prison for her work to defend Palestinian prisoners. Then, she said, she was rearrested in 2014 for the same charge and sentenced to three years and ten months.

“After I was released at the end of 2017, the Israeli intelligence services started working to prevent me from practicing my work forever and, of course through their racism, and by the help of the extremist Jewish Home Party, which intervened and the Bar Union dismissed me, as media groups reported,” she said.

She wondered: “How can Jerusalemites get the money they need to pay for the fines which Israel imposes on us as Jerusalemites who live in Jerusalem?”