Ramallah – Addameer: The occupation forces arrested the human rights activist and former member of the legislative council Khalida Jarrar from her home in the city of Ramallah on Tuesday, December 26th, after raiding and searching it. Jarrar is a former prisoner and a human rights activist who works as a researcher at the Muwatin Institute at Birzeit University. She has been arrested several times and was released from her last detention in September 2021, after spending two years in occupation prisons.

The arrest of Jarrar coincides with the comprehensive aggression by the occupation against Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem since October 7th.

It is worth noting that the occupation authorities arrested Jarrar few days after she published a research paper titled "Violations against Female and Male Prisoners during the Genocidal War on Gaza," in which she detailed the violations and crimes that the occupation began committing against prisoners inside occupation prisons since October 7th amid the widespread campaign of arrests carried out by the occupation authorities against Palestinians

The arrest of Jarrar is part of the occupation's policy aimed at pursuing and punishing former prisoners and human rights activists to prevent them from monitoring and documenting the occupation's crimes and to hinder exposing these crimes at all levels. Until now, Jarrar has not been presented for a detention extension session. She is one of dozens of female prisoners who have been arrested recently and are facing the harshest detention conditions in many years.

Jarrar is one of more than 4,800 detainees, both male and female, who have been arrested since October 7th. They are enduring extremely difficult conditions, where within less than a month, six prisoners have been killed due to the tragic circumstances and repeated suppression inside the occupation's prisons.

The systematic and widespread targeting and pursuit by the occupation authorities against Jarrar and other human rights activists and former prisoners, depriving them of their basic rights, constitutes a crime against humanity as it amounts to persecution against a group for political reasons.