Israel renews administrative detention of Palestinian MP 

Hassan Yousef (Twitter)

Middle East Monitor  /  March 30, 2020

The Israeli occupation authorities renewed administrative detention for a Palestinian MP on Sunday. Hassan Yousef, 66, will be held for at least another four months, Quds Press has reported, citing details provided by the MP’s son, Owais.

Israel uses so-called administrative detention to hold Palestinians with neither charge nor trial, and to renew the detention period repeatedly. According to Owais Yousef, his father’s detention was supposed to end tomorrow, 31 March.

Yousef was detained at his house in the West Bank city of Bitunya, west of Ramallah, on 2 April 2019. He had been free for less than six months, having been released from an earlier period of detention in October 2018.

The member of the Change and Reform bloc in the Palestinian parliament has spent a total of 22 years in Israeli prisons. He was among the 415 Palestinians deported by Israel to no man’s land in South Lebanon in 1992 for up to two years.