JERUSALEM (Ma’an) — Israeli forces detained 22 Palestinians in East Jerusalem Tuesday, accusing them of throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails, a local committee and a police spokeswoman said.
The head of a committee for prisoners’ families told Ma’an that Israeli police arrested Mahdi Muhammad Abu al-Hawa, Muhammad Rabayaa, Ahmad Shweiki, and Tareq Aziz Abu Khdeir.
Amjad Abu Asab added that Israeli police had summoned five Palestinian children in the al-Thawri neighborhood of Silwan for questioning. The five were interrogated for several hours and then released on house arrest.
He identified them as Muhammad Khaled Abd al-Razzaq, 12, Mutaz Shweiki, 13, Ashraf Ghaith, 14, Muhammad Younis Abd al-Razzaq, 14, and Marwan Alwat, 14.
The arrests brought to 700 the number of arrests in East Jerusalem since July, police spokeswoman Luba Samri said in a statement, including 50 this month alone.
Among those arrested were 13 minors, some of whom police said were suspected of having thrown Molotovs at at security forces or residences in the past week.
Fierce clashes regularly broke out across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in July, following the brutal murder of a Palestinian teenager in a revenge attack by Jewish extremists for the killing of three young Israelis.
The protests continued throughout the summer as Palestinians decried a bloody Israeli military offensive against the Gaza Strip.
On Sept. 7, 16-year-old Palestinian Mohammed Sinokrot died from injuries sustained when he was shot by Israeli border police in East Jerusalem.
Police said he was shot in the leg with a foam pellet while protesting, but his family said he was shot in the head on his way to the mosque.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed it, in a move never recognized by the international community.
Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their promised state, but Israel claims the entire city as its indivisible capital.
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