Palestinian police violently suppressed a demonstration on Sunday afternoon in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, after locals gathered in protest of a case against slain activist Basel al-Araj and five other Palestinians who were imprisoned alongside him last year by the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Several protesters were detained and at least 11 were injured -- including Mahmoud al-Araj, Basel's father --- in the clashes, which were ongoing as of Sunday afternoon. Police assaulted journalists and prevented them from covering the event, while some reported that their equipment had been broken.
Mahmoud al-Araj was hospitalized, and told reporters that he would launch a hunger strike if all Palestinians detained during the march were not immediately released. Six protesters who had been detained were then released, among them prominent Islamic Jihad member Khader Adnan.
PA forces were heavily deployed in the area, suppressing the demonstration with tear gas and beating protesters with batons.
Some of those who were assaulted by police were identified by witnesses as Palestine TV reporter Jihad Barkat, cameraman for Jordanian outlet Roya TV Muhammad Abu Shusha, Roya TV reporter Hafith Abu Sabra, reporter for Ramallah-based Watan agency Ahmad Milhem, lawyer Farid al-Atrash, and Omar Assaf.
Basel al-Araj, Muhammad Harb, Haitham Siyaj, Muhammad al-Salamin, Seif al-Idrissi, and Ali Dar al-Sheikh, were detained and tortured by Palestinian security forces in April last year, after the PA accused them of illegal weapons possession and planning an attack on Israel.
A hunger strike launched by the six ultimately led to their release six months later in September, without any charges being brought against them.
However, Harb, Siyaj, al-Salamin, and al-Idrissi were detained by Israeli forces immediately after being freed, eliciting outrage among Palestinians over the PA’s policy of security coordination with Israel.
Al-Araj remained in hiding, and after several months on the run, Israeli forces ambushed him last week in a home near Ramallah and shot him dead, in what was branded as an “execution” and an “assassination” of the 31-year-old, who was beloved in Palestinian activist circles as a freedom fighter, an intellectual, and a theorist.
The killing has evoked a strong emotional response among activist youth, who took to the streets on Sunday after the Ramallah district court announced that al-Araj’s fellow prisoners in the case would still be tried in court for allegedly possessing weapons and planning an attack on Israel, despite the fact that four of the men remained held in Israeli custody. According to local outlet PNN, Ali Dar al-Sheikh was not in Israeli custody and was present at the court session in Ramallah on Sunday.
Palestinian news outlet al-Quds Network reported that lawyer Muhannad Karaja had previously requested that the Ramallah magistrate court drop the charges against Harb, Siyaj, al-Salamin, and al-Idrissi, and that the judge had requested that the lawyer present documentation that proved that the four were actually being detained by Israel.
When Karaja presented a certificate of proof to the judge during Sunday’s court session, the judge disregarded it, and insisted on postponing the trial until April 30, reportedly saying that “the four might be out of Israeli prisons” by that date, according to al-Quds.
Karaja said that the judge dropped charges against al-Araj only after his death certificate was presented in court.
In response to the case, the Hamas movement released a statement denouncing the trial as a “dangerous” measure and representative of the “systematic defamation of Palestinian resistance.” The statement said that the move was a testament to the “moral decline” of a “disgraced” Palestinian Authority.
