Ramallah: The Palestinian Prisoners Club said on Sunday it has recruited a number of lawyers to defend three female Palestinian former prisoners who have been arrested after entering territory claimed by the Israeli state to visit a fellow freed female prisoner.
The three women did not have the necessary entry permits required by the Israelis.
According to Amani Abu Srahna, a senior official at the club, Leena Abu Gholmah, Leena Al Jawabrah, both from the village of Beit Foreek near Nablus, and Moyasar Atyani from the city of Nablus have been detained by the Israeli forces in the village of Al Tira while on a visit to their friend Woroud Qasim.
She said that the Israeli forces detained the three women visitors and their host. Woroud Qasim was later released, but put under house arrest awaiting her case to be reviewed by an Israeli court.
“The three Palestinian former prisoners in Israeli jails have been transferred to Hasharon Prison with the Israeli authorities pressing charges of illegal entry of Israel and other as yet undisclosed charges,” she told Gulf News.
Sources at the Palestinian Ministry of Detainees Affairs said that the three former prisoners had assumed it was easy to enter Israel as hundreds of thousands of Palestinian entered the pre-1948 boundaries now controlled b the Israeli state during Ramadan and Eid Al Fitr.
“The three former prisoners were shocked to find the Israeli army forces move on Woroud’s house the moment they entered it,” sources told Gulf News.
The sources said that the three former prisoners committed a serious mistake in entering Israel without holding the official entry permits. “We want the charges to be security charges not criminal ones. The three women were former prisoners and the Israeli security authorities should handle them from a security angle not a criminal one,” said the officials.
“Had the three former women prisoners consulted the Palestinian official authorities about their intentions to visit Israel, they would have never been in trouble at all and they would never have been advised to go there,” said the sources.
