Riyadh Al-Ashqar, a researcher at the Palestine Center for Prisoner Studies, said today, Saturday, that the Israeli occupation is using the policy of arrests against Jerusalemites as a pressure card in a systematic and intentional way to push them to leave their land and sanctities voluntarily to find a safe and decent life away from the troubles of the occupation and its continuous targeting for them.
This came during a working paper presented by Al-Ashqar, during a forum organized by the Union of Palestinian Academics under the title “The Reality of the City of Jerusalem, Future Indicators and the Basics of Resilience.”
Al-Ashqar said, "The occupation for decades has used many means to displace Palestinians from Jerusalem, but arrests remain the most dangerous method on which the occupation relies heavily in pushing Palestinian Jerusalemites to leave their land and displace them."
He added, "The arrests have become among the Jerusalemites a daily phenomenon inherent to them and a tool to exert pressure on them, subjugate and terrorize them and impose a fait accompli policy to displace the population and empty the city of its original people in favor of the occupation and deter them from confronting the occupation plans against the holy city."
Al-Ashqar considered that the seriousness of the arrests against Al-Quds people is not a normal or transient event, or a one-time event, but rather a systematic policy to deplete the 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 flee and move away to find a safe life. .
He pointed out that the lives of Jerusalemites have become dependent on this arrest, indicating that the occupation deals with Jerusalemites as citizens and permanent residents of the occupation entity, and that is why they are not allowed to carry out any propaganda, political or tactical activities or to show their affiliation with the Palestinian cause, even by raising the Palestinian flag, or participating in any Events that take on the character of his plans.
He continued, "Therefore, the occupation intensifies the penalties against the Jerusalemites with harsh sentences and the exorbitant financial fines that weigh on them. In the last five years, the escalation of targeting them with arrest and human attrition, which comes within the framework of direct targeting of Al-Aqsa, the holy sites, the Palestinian presence and the historical and religious standing of the city."
The study presented by the researcher Al-Ashqar revealed that the total number of arrests among Jerusalemites since the beginning of 2015 until the end of last July were more than 11,000 arrests, including 3,500 children, and about 500 women and girls.
Whereas, during the past five years and up to the first half of this year, the occupation issued more than (2,500) deportation decisions against al-Quds people, whether from Al-Aqsa Mosque or Old Jerusalem, and more than 1,500 decisions were issued for house arrest during that period.
Al-Ashqar pointed out that the occupation focuses on targeting Jerusalemites on the category of children, as one-third of the detention cases that target them are children who are minors, who form the first line of defense for Jerusalem, by joining forces with the occupation soldiers in different neighborhoods and confronting settler incursions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque alongside the men and the militia.
Al-Ashqar recommended the necessity of strengthening the elements of steadfastness among the Jerusalemites to support them in facing the occupation measures and its attempts to empty the city of its people, exposing its policy against the Jerusalemites and their human exhaustion, as well as providing intensive legal support to the prisoners of Jerusalem, especially children and women.
And he called for training a legal cadre to study the occupation laws that apply to the people of Jerusalem, and try to exploit them to serve Jerusalemites and strengthen their steadfastness, provide them with financial, psychological, social and legal support to help them withstand, document the continuing violations of the occupation against them and work to raise them to international courts
