Incursion and Arrests in Tubas
from Brighton Palestine, 4 April 2007
On Monday April 2nd the IDF entered the town of Tubas (in Area A – the ‘Palestinian controlled’ area of the occupied West Bank). Around 40 soldiers and several vehicles surrounded the home of Ibrahim and Hamid Daragmeh and told the family that they had to leave or they would ’shoot everybody’.
Residents reported that Ibrahim and Hamid had already been arrested and were being detained in the army vehicles outside.
The soldiers searched the house, breaking down one door leading to the upstairs rooms, but found nothing.
The convoy then drove to the Tubas branch of Al Quds Bank, surrounded the building and entered the bank.
The manager of the bank refused to comment on what the soldiers did inside the bank. Israeli press later reported that the arrests had been due to a ’suspicious deposit’.
Ibrahim and Hamid both live and work in Tubas. Their family were shocked at their arrests and do not know where they have been taken or what they have been charged with. It will be difficult to find out where they are being held until after the Jewish holiday. Many Palestinian prisoners are detained, charged, imprisoned and tried inside ‘1948′ Israel; families of prisoners often cannot obtain a permt to cross the Green Line. Palestinian prisoners are tried by Israel under military law whereas Isaeli settlers or civilians in the West Bank are governed by Israeli civilian law.