Agencies
AL-QUDS — A prominent Palestinian lawmaker has been jailed for 15 months by an Israeli military court, the military confirmed on Monday.
Khalida Jarrar, a senior member of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and a well-known political figure, was sentenced on Sunday at the Ofer military court near the city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
She had been arrested in April on a series of charges, including encouraging attacks against Israel and violating a travel ban.
“Jarrar was sentenced to 15 months on the charges she was arrested for a few months ago, including incitement of terrorism,” an army spokesperson told AFP on Monday.
The period since April will be considered part of her sentence, meaning she is likely to remain in jail until next summer.
The Palestinian prisoner rights group Addameer said she had also been fined 10,000 shekels ($2600, 2400 euros) and given a five-year suspended sentence.
Israel considers the PFLP a terrorist organization and at the time of her arrest the Israeli army said she posed unspecified “substantial security risks.”
Issa Qaraqe, Palestinian minister for prisoner affairs, condemned the trial, calling it “arbitrary and legally unjustified.”
“This is a political arrest. The charges against her are fabricated and ridiculous… there are no security reasons as claimed by the Israeli authorities,” he told AFP.
Jarrar is a member of the Palestinian parliament which has not met since 2007 after elections a year earlier were won by Hamas.
In August 2014 she was ordered to leave Ramallah within 24 hours and to move to Jericho, but announced at the time she would disobey it.
Air raid targets Hamas camp
An Israeli air raid early Monday struck a Hamas training camp in the northern Gaza Strip in response to shots fired at Israeli patrol vehicles along the border, with no injuries reported, officials said.
Hamas security sources said two rockets hit a training camp for its armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, east of Gaza City in the Zeitoun neighbourhood, with no one there at the time.
Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement, rules the Gaza Strip. Shots were fired at Israeli military vehicles near the Gaza border on Friday and Sunday, causing bullet holes to their windows and leading to Monday’s response, Israel’s army said. No injuries were reported from the shooting incidents.
Israel has regularly responded to rocket fire from the Gaza Strip with air raids.
