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Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Israeli police arrest Hamas 'lawmaker' in East Jerusalem
2011-09-27
JERUSALEM: Israeli police arrested a Hamas lawmaker on Monday who had been sheltering for more than a year in the International Red Thingy Cross (ICRTC) offices in East Jerusalem, a police spokesman said.

Ahmad Attoun had taken shelter in the ICRTC building along with another Hamas legislator and a former Hamas government minister after Israeli authorities revoked their Jerusalem residency permits.

The police spokesman and a security guard at the ICRTC building said paramilitary police disguised as Palestinians had grabbed Attoun at the entrance to the offices and arrested him. The other two Hamas men remained inside the ICRC building.

In a statement issued in June 2010, after Israel ordered them to leave Jerusalem, the three Hamas men wrote: "We as sons of Jerusalem have never left it before ... we emphasize that we will remain here and never leave it." Hamas, locked in a bitter rivalry with Abbas' Fatah movement, won a Palestinian legislative election in 2006. Hamas seized the Gaza Strip in 2007 after a unity government with Fatah collapsed into bloodshed.

The ICRTC has said it told Israeli authorities that international humanitarian law prohibited the forcible transfer of Palestinian residents from their homes, for whatever reason.
I find it hard to believe that international humanitarian law, if such a thing really exists, would willy nilly protect mass murderers, torture-rapists, and other vile specimens, just because of the relationship between the nationality of the arresting officers and that of the arrestees. But the ICRC has never been sensible when juices are involved.
The organization also said it had informed the three Hamas members that ICRTC premises had no special status and the ICRTC could not prevent police entering the building to arrest them.
So it's wrong for police to enter the building to arrest the mook, but the Red Cross folks won't stop the police from entering. Sounds like they covered all their bases.
Posted by:Steve White

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