Palestinian MP Khalida Jarrar, one of the figures of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was arrested Tuesday, December 26 in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, by soldiers of the Israeli army who broke into the family home “by breaking down the door at five in the morning,” her husband, Ghassan Jarrar, announced to Agence France-Presse.
In a statement, the PFLP said the Israeli army “carried out a large campaign of arrests among PFLP leaders and members in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday morning.” The organization – of Marxist persuasion and considered “terrorist” by Israel, the United States and the European Union – said: “These arrests will not break the will of our people. » Other “senior officials” of the group were also arrested Tuesday morning, she added.
4,700 Palestinians arrested in the West Bank since October 7
A member of the Palestinian Parliament suspended since 2007, Khalida Jarrar was released in September 2021 after serving a two-year sentence in an Israeli prison. In a statement, the Israeli army confirmed the MP’s new arrest, presenting her as “the leader of the PFLP” in the West Bank and saying she was “wanted for terrorism.”
The Israeli army has increased arrest campaigns in the West Bank since October 7 and the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, triggered after a Hamas attack on Israeli soil. According to the Prisoners’ Club, an association that defends the rights of Palestinian detainees, some 4,700 Palestinians have been arrested in the West Bank since October 7. The Israeli offensive carried out in retaliation for the Hamas attack left more than 20,600 dead, the majority of them women, adolescents and children, according to the latest report published by the Hamas Ministry of Health.