The Israeli police have raided a pair of Palestinian bookstores in East Jerusalem, arresting two of their owners and confiscating books, in a move that came as Israel tightens its restrictions on free speech and cultural activities for Palestinians across the country.
The police on Monday confirmed the arrests of two brothers, Mahmood Muna and Ahmed Muna, following the raids on Sunday, saying that books supporting terrorism were being sold in their shops, including a children’s coloring book entitled “From the Jordan to the Sea.”
The slogan “from the river to the sea” has long been a rallying cry for Palestinian nationalism and is usually taken by Israelis as a denial of their country’s right to exist.
It was not immediately clear which other books were the target of the raid.
Murad Muna, a brother of the two shop owners, denied that books were being sold in the stores that promoted violence. The raid is part of a “political persecution aimed at silencing our voice in the public sphere,” he said.
Germany’s ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, wrote on X that he knew the Munas, the owners of the Educational Bookshop, which operates the two stores that were raided, as “peace-loving, proud Palestinian Jerusalemites, open to discussion and intellectual exchange.”
Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Israeli police have increasingly arrested Palestinian citizens of Israel on charges of incitement to terror on social media and have shut down film screenings critical of the Israeli military or government in Haifa and Jaffa.
The Educational Bookshop’s outlets are in East Jerusalem, a part of the city that Israel captured from Jordan in 1967 and later annexed. Israel considers all of Jerusalem to be its undivided capital but most East Jerusalem residents are Palestinians, and the United Nations has deemed it occupied territory.
On Monday morning, protesters gathered outside a court in Jerusalem that was deliberating on the detention of the two men.
The brothers’ lawyer, Nasser Oday, said the two men would remain in detention until Tuesday morning, then be under house arrest for five days, pending an investigation.
Mai Muna, the wife of Mahmoud Muna, said the police went into the bookstores on the main commercial road in East Jerusalem around 3 p.m. on Sunday.
“They started throwing books off the shelves,” Ms. Muna said in a phone interview on Monday as she waited at the courthouse for her husband’s hearing. “They didn’t speak any English — they were looking for anything with a Palestinian flag.”
The two stores and a cafe have for decades been a cornerstone of Palestinian cultural and educational life in East Jerusalem, serving both locals and people from abroad and hosting talks and film screenings.
