JERUSALEM (Ma’an) — Israeli forces detained Palestinian writer Khalida Ghusheh on Saturday morning after raiding her home in the neighborhood of Beit Hanina in occupied East Jerusalem.
Ghusheh’s manager, Amani Abd al-Karim, said that Israeli police had raided Ghusheh’s home, before detaining her and transporting her to a police station in the illegal Israeli settlement of Neve Yaqoub in the Beit Hanina.
Al-Karim added that Ghusheh called her after arriving to the interrogation center, informing her that she was in need of a lawyer and said that the reason for her detention was related to her novel scheduled to be published in October. The novel, titled “The Jackal’s Trap,” explores Palestinian collaborators with the Israeli occupation.
An Israeli police spokesperson was not immediately available to comment on the case.
Scores of Palestinians have been detained in recent months for expressing their opinions on the Israeli occupation, particularly through social media, in a crackdown that rights groups have said is aimed to stifle Palestinian freedom of speech.
Israeli forces detained Palestinian poet Dareen Tartour, a citizen of Israel, in Oct. 2015 and charged her with “incitement to violence” for posts she made on Facebook and a video clip of her poem “Qawim ya sha’abi, qawimhum” (Resist my people, resist them). She was facing up to eight years in prison and had already spent months in detention and house arrest.
Israeli authorities have claimed that a wave of violence that first erupted in Oct. 2015 was caused largely by “incitement” among Palestinians through social media.
Meanwhile, Palestinians have instead pointed chiefly to the frustration and despair brought on by Israel’s nearly 50-year military occupation of the Palestinian territory and the absence of a political horizon as reasons for the outbreak of violence. Many Palestinians have also pointed out that Israeli violence has continued to shape everyday life in the occupied territory, regardless of any recent “upticks” in clashes or attacks.
