The Israeli police have raided a pair of Palestinian bookstores in East Jerusalem, arresting two of their homeowners and confiscating books, in a transfer that got here as Israel tightens its restrictions on free speech and cultural actions for Palestinians throughout the nation.
The police on Monday confirmed the arrests of two brothers, Mahmood Muna and Ahmed Muna, following the raids on Sunday, saying that books supporting terrorism had been being offered of their outlets, together with a youngsters’s coloring guide entitled “From the Jordan to the Sea.”
The slogan “from the river to the sea” has lengthy been a rallying cry for Palestinian nationalism and is normally taken by Israelis as a denial of their nation’s proper to exist.
It was not instantly clear which different books had been the goal of the raid.
Murad Muna, a brother of the 2 store homeowners, denied that books had been being offered within the shops that promoted violence. The raid is a part of a “political persecution geared toward silencing our voice within the public sphere,” he mentioned.
Germany’s ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, wrote on X that he knew the Munas, the homeowners of the Instructional Bookshop, which operates the 2 shops that had been raided, as “peace-loving, proud Palestinian Jerusalemites, open to dialogue and mental change.”
Because the Hamas-led assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Israeli police have more and more arrested Palestinian residents of Israel on prices of incitement to terror on social media and have shut down movie screenings important of the Israeli army or authorities in Haifa and Jaffa.
The Instructional Bookshop’s retailers are in East Jerusalem, part of the town that Israel captured from Jordan in 1967 and later annexed. Israel considers all of Jerusalem to be its undivided capital however most East Jerusalem residents are Palestinians, and the United Nations has deemed it occupied territory.
On Monday morning, protesters gathered outdoors a court docket in Jerusalem that was deliberating on the detention of the 2 males.
The brothers’ lawyer, Nasser Oday, mentioned the 2 males would stay in detention till Tuesday morning, then be beneath home arrest for 5 days, pending an investigation.
Mai Muna, the spouse of Mahmoud Muna, mentioned the police went into the bookstores on the principle industrial street in East Jerusalem round 3 p.m. on Sunday.
“They began throwing books off the cabinets,” Ms. Muna mentioned in a cellphone interview on Monday as she waited on the courthouse for her husband’s listening to. “They didn’t communicate any English — they had been in search of something with a Palestinian flag.”
The 2 shops and a restaurant have for many years been a cornerstone of Palestinian cultural and academic life in East Jerusalem, serving each locals and other people from overseas and internet hosting talks and movie screenings.
