The Palestine Center for Prisoner Studies has monitored 633 cases of detention since the beginning of the current year 2021, in the Jerusalem governorate alone, affecting all segments of the Jerusalem community, with a focus on children.
The center said in a statement that the occupation is using the policy of massive arrests in Jerusalem as a collective punishment to drain the Jerusalemites and deter them from defending the Holy City, and to confront the escalating incursions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque, noting that they have escalated since the beginning of the year of arrests that directly target the Palestinian presence and the historical and religious position of the Holy City. .
Riyadh Al-Ashqar, a researcher at the Center, said that the ongoing arrests in Jerusalem are a systematic and deliberate policy to drain Jerusalemites and create a harsh living, economic and security reality that targets all aspects of their lives, so that they become threatened and unstable, to push them to leave their homes and holy sites voluntarily for the occupation and flee to find a safe and decent life away from The upheavals of the occupation and its continuous targeting of them.
Al-Ashqar indicated that the rate of arrests from Jerusalem constitutes more than 40 percent of the total number of arrests that take place in all parts of the territories every month. Women, the sick, the elderly, freed prisoners, MPs, Islamic and national leaders are not excluded, and this confirms the targeting of the holy city. Thoughtfully.
Most of the arrests that take place in Jerusalem are concentrated in the towns of Issawiya, the Old City of Jerusalem, Silwan, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the roads leading to it.
He explained that the occupation targets religious figures in Jerusalem to terrorize them and prevent them from inciting citizens to confront settler incursions and the ongoing Judaization operations, as the occupation arrested Sheikh Ikrimah Sabri, head of the Supreme Islamic Authority and the preacher of the Al-Aqsa Mosque several times, and summoned him for investigation more than once.
