JERUSALEM: Several people gathered on Monday outside a Jerusalem court to protest the arrest of two Palestinian booksellers in the city’s east, occupied by Israel since 1967 and later annexed.

The protesters shouted slogans denouncing Israel as a “fascist state” and held placards accusing the country of “cowardice”. Mahmud and Ahmad Muna, who were arrested on Sunday, were to appear in the court for an arraignment.

Both work for the Educational Bookshop, a cultural institution in east Jerusalem. “Jerusalem District police officers have arrested two residents of east Jerusalem suspected of selling books containing incitement and support for terrorism,” police said in a statement.

During the operation, the police found books on “nationalist Palestinian themes”, the statement said, adding police were asking the court for an extension of the booksellers’ detention. The Muna family’s lawyer, Nasser Odeh, said “hundreds of books” had been seized on Sunday.

Sidra Ezrahi, an Israeli-American taking part in the demonstration, called the arrests “unbelievable”. “We’ve been coming to this bookshop not for years but for generations,” the protester in her 80s said, adding the arrests were “exactly what fascist states are doing”.

Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, also condemned the raid. “Shocked by Israeli forces’ raid on East Jerusalem’s Educational Bookshop — an intellectual lighthouse and family-run gem resisting Palestinian erasure under apartheid,” she wrote on X.

“Internationals in Jerusalem: please show up, stand with the Muna family, and protect this vital hub,” she added.

Published in Dawn, February 11th, 2025