News|Conflict

Israel arrests Palestinian leftist figure Khalida Jarrar

Former legislator Jarrar was arrested by dozens of Israeli soldiers at her Ramallah home in the occupied West Bank.

Former Palestinian lawmaker Khalida Jarrar
Khalida Jarrar, a member of Palestinian Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, photographed at her home in Ramallah [File: Anadolu Agency]
Published On 31 Oct 2019

Israeli forces arrested a prominent Palestinian politician from her home in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah overnight on Thursday.

Khalida Jarrar, a former member of the defunct Palestinian Legislative Council, was arrested at 3am local time (00:00 GMT) and taken to an unknown area, local media reported.

According to her daughter Yara Jarrar, the house was surrounded by more than Israeli 70 soldiers who arrived in 12 military vehicles.

“Mom and sister were asleep when they approached,” Yara said in a post on Twitter.

The 56-year-old Jarrar, who is associated with the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) – considered a “terrorist” group by Israel – was arrested in 2015 and 2017.

Her latest release from Israeli prison was in last February after she spent 20 months in “administrative detention” – a form of internment where an individual is held without trial or charge.

According to Samidoun, a Palestinian prisoner solidarity network, Jarrar is a longtime advocate of the freedom of Palestinian prisoners and has served as the former vice chair and executive director of Palestinian prisoners’ rights group Addameer.

“Within the Israeli occupation prisons, she played a leading role in supporting the education of the minor girls held there, organising classes on human rights and in review for mandatory high school examinations when the prison authority denied the girls a teacher,” Samidoun wrote on its website.

There are currently seven Palestinian politicians imprisoned in Israeli jails – five held under administrative detention.

Source: Al Jazeera