The Paleostinian Authority’s security forces announced Sunday that it had "foiled" the sale of roughly 3,000 dunams (741 acres) throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem to Jews.
The PASF statement, posted on its Facebook page, said a large-scale operation to prevent the land sales resulted in the arrests of 44 Paleostinians, who had been attempting to sell property near the cities of East Jerusalem, Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron, Qalqiliya, and Salfit.
Three of the suspects have already been sentenced to 15 years of hard labor, the statement said.
The Ynet news site reported that among the incarcerated
... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not...
was East Jerusalem resident Issam Akel.
The Jerusalem resident had been sought by the PA over his involvement in the sale of a home in the Moslem Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City to Jews.
The PA government formed a committee to investigate the sale of the home in the Old City, PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah tweeted on October 9.
Paleostinian law considers attempting to sell or selling land to Israeli Jews a punishable offense.
According to the law, possible punishments for trying to sell or selling land to Israeli Jews include different degrees of hard labor and execution.
However,
by candlelight every wench is handsome...
the law requires that PA President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas
... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial...approve any death sentence, and he has not signed off on any executions since 2006.
Last month, Israel twice detained Adnan Ghaith, the PA governor of Jerusalem, for his reported connection to Akel’s arrest.
The Sunday PASF statement did not specify whether the three sentenced to 15 years of hard labor were the same as the two men given an identical punishment last month.
Then, the PA High Judicial Council’s website announced the sentencing of "F.A.E. and A. Kh. M. from Kafr Thulth in the Qalqilya Governorate for the crime of leaking land to the enemy."
Separately, in early November, the body of Ala’a Qirsh, one of six Paleostinians who died in a major road accident in the Jordan Valley, was barred from being buried in a Moslem cemetery in Jerusalem over allegations that he had sold property to Israeli Jews, an official in the Jerusalem Waqf told The Times of Israel.
The PASF statement called on Paleostinians to "exercise caution" in handling their property to prevent the transfer of land "to the occupation."