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Scene. File. Published by Maan News
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JERUSALEM (Ma’an) -- Israeli forces detained a 15-year-old Palestinian and attempted to detain a 10-year-old on Friday during a police raid in the area of Kroum al-Qamar in the Silwan neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem, while Israeli forces handed out demolition orders to two Palestinian families in the Wadi Hilweh area of Silwan.

The Silwan-based Wadi Hilweh Information Center said that Israeli forces raided the house of Muhammad al-Abasi in Silwan and attempted to detain his two sons: Nasir, 15, and Hamza, 10 for allegedly throwing rocks at Israeli forces.

The center said that Hamza was released from Israeli custody after the family had intervened as he was being dragged into an Israeli police vehicle. However, the 10-year-old was issued an order to appear for interrogations at the Israeli police station on Salah al-Din street in East Jerusalem.

Nasir, meanwhile, was detained by Israeli forces.

The family told the center that Israeli forces had attempted to detain the two brothers when they were swimming in a pool, and had prevented Hamza from dressing.

Israeli police spokesperson Luba al-Samri released a statement saying that Israeli police had attempted to disperse a “local dispute between two families” in Silwan.

Al-Samri said that Palestinians began throwing rocks at the police and damaged a police vehicle, while an Israeli police officer was lightly injured.
A Palestinian minor was detained during the incident who was “involved in rock-throwing,” while another suspect was able to “escape” from the Israeli police, al-Samri said.
Al-Samri added that Israeli police had conducted a "search" throughout Silwan in order to "find the suspect and present him to justice."

Palestinian stone throwers, including minors, face harsh penalties by Israeli authorities, with Israel passing laws in 2015 allowing for up to 20 years in prison if charged with throwing stones at vehicles and a minimum of three years for the act of throwing a stone at an Israeli.

Right groups have denounced the legislation as being designed specifically to target Palestinian youth, as Israelis and settlers are rarely prosecuted under the same standards of the law.

Meanwhile, the center said that Israeli forces and Jerusalem municipality crews had also entered the Wadi Hilweh area of Silwan, and raided the homes of Firas Samarin and Muhammad Faraj Diam, whom they presented with demolition orders for allegedly building their homes without Israeli-issued building permits.

A spokesperson for the Jerusalem municipality was not immediately available for comment.

According to UN documentation, as of June 19, 74 Palestinian-owned structures were demolished by Israel in East Jerusalem since the beginning of the year, displacing at least 158 Palestinians. A total of 190 Palestinian buildings were demolished in East Jerusalem in 2016.

Israel rarely grants Palestinians permits to build in East Jerusalem, though the Jerusalem municipality has claimed that compared to the Jewish population, they receive a disproportionately low number of permit applications from Palestinian communities, which also see high approval ratings.

However, testimonies collected by the Applied Research Institute - Jerusalem (ARIJ) found that the procedures to apply for Israeli-issued building permits were lengthy, sometimes lasting for several years, while the application costs could reach up to 300,000 shekels ($79,180).

As four out of five Palestinians in East Jerusalem live under the poverty line, applying for costly building permits is nearly impossible, leading to only seven percent of Jerusalem building permits being allocated to Palestinian neighborhoods.

In addition to land seizures and home demolitions, the crackdown on Palestinian Jerusalemites has also seen the escalation of violent night raids by Israeli police, carried out in breach of protocol and without proper search warrants.

The fate of Jerusalem has been a focal point of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades, with numerous tensions arising over Israeli threats regarding the status of non-Jewish religious sites in the city, and the "Judaization" of East Jerusalem through settlement construction and mass home demolitions.