Addameer

A year ago today, Palestinian civil society leader Ameer Makhoul, an Israeli citizen, was arrested from his Haifa home after it was raided by Israeli forces. Makhoul, the coordinator of Ittijah, the Union of Arab Community Associations and an advocate of boycott, divestment and sanctions, warned The Electronic Intifada in January of 2010 that Israel was increasingly persecuting the Palestinian community in Israel, attempting to cut the community off from the rest of the Palestinian national movement. “Israel uses its legal system and its laws on citizenship and loyalty to the Jewish state to achieve this,” Makhoul said.

The Palestinian human rights group Addameer issued an urgent appeal today (full text below), one day after Israeli military authorities issued an administrative detention order against Ahmad Qatamesh, the Palestinian writer and political activist.

Ma’an News Agency reported today that the Palestinian prisoner rights group Addameer is condemning the extended detention of Palestinian write and political activist Ahmad Qatamesh. The Electronic Intifada published a report on Qatamesh’s arrest yesterday; his wife told EI that Israeli soldiers raided their family home in al-Bireh, near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, on 21 April.

The Alternative Information Center reports that writer Ahmad Qatamesh was arrested in his family’s Ramallah home by Israeli occupation forces and transferred to the Ofer detention center in Beitunia in the occupied West Bank: