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Right: Nasser Qawas, the director for the Jerusalem chapter of the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (File) Published by Maan News
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JERUSALEM (Ma’an) -- The director for the Jerusalem chapter of the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS), one of the most prominent prisoners' rights group in the occupied Palestinian territory, was detained by Israeli forces in occupied East Jerusalem Sunday and taken to an interrogation center, according to lawyers from the group.

PPS lawyer Mufeed al-Hajj said Sunday evening that Israeli police were “extending the detention” of the society’s director Nasser Qawas until the “interrogation was completed.”

According to al-Hajj, Israeli police had charged Qawas with “obstructing police work.”

A spokesperson for the group told Ma’an on Monday that Qawas was still being held at a detention center in Jerusalem, and that PPS had sent lawyers to deal with his case, though it remained unclear when he would be released.

Qawas, 45, has been detained tens of times by Israeli forces according to PPS, most recently in June when he was assaulted and taken in for interrogation.

Qawas was among 39 Palestinians who were detained in extensive raids across East Jerusalem, while a total of 55 Palestinians were detained across the occupied territory between Sunday night and Monday.

The raids came in the wake of a deadly shooting that left the Palestinian attacker and two Israelis dead Sunday morning in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

The past month has seen an uptick in the near-nightly raids that Israeli forces stage across the occupied Palestinian territory.

According to UN documentation, the Israeli army carried out 186 detention raids from Sept. 6 to 19, while Ma'an documentation suggests that some 118 Palestinians have been detained under various circumstances, predominantly during overnight detention raids, since the beginning of October.