Palestinian lawmaker Khalida Jarrar, a figurehead of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was arrested by the Israeli army in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, her husband said.
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Ms Jarrar, 60, was arrested by Israeli army soldiers who broke into the family's home in Ramallah “by breaking down the door at five in the morning,” Ghassan Jarrar told AFP.
A member of the Palestinian Parliament suspended since 2007, Ms. Jarrar was released in September 2021 after serving a two-year sentence in an Israeli prison.
She was arrested in October 2019 after a 17-year-old Israeli girl was killed in an attack in the occupied West Bank that the Israeli army attributed to the PFLP, a Marxist movement considered “terrorist” by Israel. The United States and the European Union.
In a statement, the PFLP said the Israeli army “carried out an extensive arrest campaign among PFLP leaders and members in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday morning.”
“These arrests will not break the will of our people,” the group added.
The Israeli army confirmed in a statement that it had arrested Ms. Jarrar, portraying her as a “leader of the PFLP” in the West Bank and saying she was “wanted for terrorism.”
Other “senior officials” from the group were also arrested on Tuesday morning, the PFLP added.
The Israeli army has stepped up its arrest campaigns in the West Bank since October 7 and the start of the war in Gaza, which was triggered by a bloody attack of unprecedented magnitude by Hamas on Israeli soil that, according to figures, killed around 1,140 people, mostly civilians Lives were released by the Israeli authorities.
According to the Prisoners' Club, an association that advocates for the rights of Palestinian prisoners, around 4,700 Palestinians have been arrested in the West Bank since October 7.
Israel's retaliatory offensive for the Hamas attack killed more than 20,600 people, most of them women, teenagers and children, according to the latest Hamas Health Ministry report.