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Hamas leader condemns arrests by Palestinian Authority

May 1, 2020 at 1:02 pm

Palestinian Authority police forces can be seen violently arresting a Palestinian man on 12 March 2017 [Issam Rimawi/Anadolu Agency]

Hamas has called on the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank to end political detention completely because “it harms the unity of the Palestinian people”.

Senior member Abdel Rahman Shadid asked in a statement: “In whose interest are these detentions and what is the goal behind them?”

He noted that political detentions are taking place at a time when the Palestinian people are facing the COVID-19 pandemic and after Israel announced its plan to annex the occupied West Bank.

Shadid condemned what he described as the Palestinian Authority’s campaign of arrests and summoning Palestinian citizens on the grounds that they were distributing aid and charity among the poor and those in need.

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This policy “deprives hundreds of Palestinian families, during this hardship, from obtaining aid, which intensifies the suffering of those families.”

“Arrests and summoning of our people on the grounds of aid [they were giving] to the poor contradict the calls for solidarity that were made by the government in the West Bank,” Shadid added.