Hundreds of Palestinians have been arrested over the past month and a half in occupied East Jerusalem, in what lawyers said was a direct response to the Israeli police force losing its standing.
The escalation, which began after Israeli security forces banned Palestinians from accessing the Damascus Gate area, has spread to include violent Israeli repression of sit-ins in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, a “Death to Arabs” march by Israeli settlers, several mass incursions into Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a deadly 11-day Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, mob attacks on Palestinian citizens of Israel, and a widespread arrest campaign that has targeted at least 2,000 Palestinians within Jerusalem and the occupied territories.
Many of the arrests carried out in occupied East Jerusalem are based on what Palestinians published on their social media, particularly videos where they ridicule Israeli forces. According to lawyer Nasser Odeh, pursuing Palestinians because of what they post on their social media accounts is not new.
“We’ve seen it in 2015-2016 during the Abu Khdeir flare-up,” Odeh told Al Jazeera, referring to the outbreak of protests and escalations the city witnessed following the 2015 murder and burning alive of Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir by Israeli settlers.
“After the Israeli government expanded its anti-terrorism law in 2016, that gave Israeli forces more power to arrest Palestinians on the back of their social media posts, alleging ‘incitement’ or even ‘association with a terrorist group’.”
Currently, this practice has intensified – and based on his experience with such cases in 2015-2016, some of which had stretched out for years after – Odeh is wary that the arrests will only increase.
“I guarantee you that in the next six to eight months, the number of arrests will double if not triple,” he said.
Number of arrests
While some 550 arrests have been reported in general – an estimated 25 percent of them minors – Odeh argues the numbers are much higher.
“Based on the sheer numbers of arrests I’ve seen in the courts day in and day out – at one point there was between 70 to120 arrests per day – I would estimate that since the beginning of Ramadan [mid-April] until now the number of arrests have reached 1,000,” he said.
According to Grassroots Jerusalem, an organisation and platform for community mobilisation, advocacy, and Palestinian rights, many of the detainees are either released on the same night of their arrest or within 24 hours without being brought before the court.
Their release is conditioned on paying fines that range from 500 to 5,000 shekels ($154-$1,540), house arrest, and being banned for a few weeks or months from certain places such as Damascus Gate, the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, the Old City in general, and Sheikh Jarrah.
