The day Israel came for the booksellers

If at any point over the past year and a half you might have thought the Israeli authorities had already crossed every possible threshold when it comes to curtailing Palestinians’ freedom of expression, you would have been mistaken. Because yesterday, Israeli police raided two branches of a world-famous Palestinian bookstore in occupied East Jerusalem, arrested the owner and his nephew, and seized a selection of books — including a children’s coloring book.

During the hearing held today at the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court, the police representative Sgt. Maj. Ortal Malka said they had identified eight books in the Educational Bookshop that met the criteria for “incitement,” but did not specify which ones. She also refused to address the fact that most of the books are not even written in Arabic and that the store’s clientele is primarily international.

Since an arrest on suspicion of incitement requires prior approval from the State Prosecutor’s Office, the shop’s owner, Mahmoud Muna, and his nephew, Ahmad Muna, who works alongside him, were arrested on suspicion of “disturbing public order” — a common practice in cases related to freedom of expression. Nevertheless, the police claimed in a statement that the store was selling books containing “inciting content and support for terrorism,” and the search warrant that the police used to raid the two branches of the store cited “expressing solidarity with a terrorist organization” as the suspected offense.