Israel carries out detention campaign against prominent Palestine activists

Israeli occupation forces and police carried out a detention campaign against journalists and activists in Sheikh Jarrah over the weekend, Arab48 and agencies reported.

As part of the campaign, occupation forces raided the house of the prominent activist Muna El-Kurd and detained her. They left a detention order for her brother Mohammed and he later handed himself into the detention centre where his sister was being held.

Many other activists were either detained, summoned or beaten by police including Al Jazeera correspondent Givara Budeiri, who was beaten and detained while covering events at Sheikh Jarrah.

Both Mohammed and Muna were released hours later and told not to take part in activities in Sheikh Jarrah which aim to disclose Israeli plans to forcibly displace them from their home along with scores of other families in the neighbourhood.

Following their release, Mohammed said the occupation was practicing policies of “intimidation” against Palestinian families.

READ: Al Jazeera denounces the assault and violent arrest of its journalist by Israeli occupation forces

Budeiri was released hours after her detention, she was ordered not to return to the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood for two weeks. She later appeared with her arm in a cast which she said happened after the soldiers kicked her and with bruising as a result of the cuffs.

In an interview on television, she said soldiers told her:

If we let Al Jazeera be silent, everyone will shut up … they were treating me like a criminal.

“What I’m seeing now on the ground, after all these years, this time, after all these years, this is the first time we see this unbelievable treating [sic] towards journalists and especially Al Jazeera.”

“They want the camera to be broken … they want the microphone to be on the ground, but we are telling them the microphone and the camera will stay and we will continue. Nothing will stop us,” she continued.

Lawyer Nasser Ouda said that the Israeli police use “secret terms” to detain the Palestinian activists and journalists with the aim to deter their action against plans to expel Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah.

Muna El Kurd said: “Israeli occupation is trying to steal the Palestinian lands in Jerusalem gradually; therefore, it does not want its plans to be exposed.”

Al Kurd concluded: “We are dealing with a colonial power which is practicing ethnic cleansing against us… Imagine that you are being threatened to be expelled from your home at any moment… Imagine you are being threatened to be forced out from the place you were born and brought up!”

READ: Israel releases detained Al Jazeera journalist