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Israeli forces raid community center in Jerusalem's Old City

13:00 Dec 12 2016 Jerusalem's Old City

Israeli forces raid community center in Jerusalem's Old City
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JERUSALEM (Ma’an) -- Israeli forces raided and ransacked a Palestinian community center in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Bab Hutta in the Old City Monday afternoon.

Director of Burj Al-Luqluq Social Center Society Muntaser Edkik told Ma’an in Jerusalem that at around 1 p.m., Israeli forces raided the building, conducting invasive searches in every room.

During the raid, which Edkik said last two hours, Israeli forces destroyed some materials and confiscated computers belonging to the center.

He added that the raid disrupted practice for a girls basketball team, a number of educational classes including a painting course, as well as a training session for children hoping to participate in a championship to mark the occasion of the prophet Muhammad’s birth.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Ma’an that “as far as he knew,” there were “no incidents” in the Old City on Monday and no arrests were made.

Edkik noted that Israeli forces occasionally raid the center to put pressure on workers there "in an attempt to prevent them from providing services to Palestinian residents of the Old City."

According to Burj Al-Luqluq Social Center Society’s website, the center was established in 1991 on land owned by two Palestinian families, despite the fact that in in 1989, plans to build an Israeli settlement on the site threatened to displace them.

“The inhabitants of the Old City were determined not to allow this to occur,” so as a result, the center became “the only piece of open space inside the Old City which was safe for their children to play and for adults to enjoy the outdoors,” according to the website.

Palestinian communities in occupied East Jerusalem have long been targeted by Israeli authorities in what has been denounced as a policy of "Judaization" of the holy city at the expense of other religious communities.

This “Judaization” has been characterized by the continuous expansion of illegal Jewish-only settlements and a large-scale policy of demolition of Palestinian homes.

Monday's incident comes after Israeli forces raided the Palestinian National Theatre in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah Thursday evening, preventing organizers from holding a singing event, with the Israeli police saying the event was organized by the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in order to "sympathize with terrorists."
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