LONDON: Two booksellers from the West Bank, recently arrested by Israeli police, say their detention is part of an escalating effort by Israeli authorities to suppress Palestinian culture.
In an interview with The Guardian, Mahmoud Muna and his nephew Ahmed, whose family has owned the Educational Bookshop in East Jerusalem for more than 40 years, described the raid on their store as part of a broader campaign to stifle Palestinian identity and free expression.
“We should not look at this as an isolated event,” Mahmoud said. “There have been a series of attacks on cultural institutions in Jerusalem and beyond. I think there is an awareness in the Israeli establishment that cultural institutions are playing a role in galvanising and protecting Palestinian cultural identity.”
The raid occurred last Sunday when plainclothes officers entered two branches of the bookshop on Salah Eddin Street — one specializing in Arabic books, the other in English and foreign-language publications. Mahmoud and Ahmed were arrested and detained for two days.
Israeli police accused the men of “selling books containing incitement and support for terrorism,” claiming officers found materials with “nationalist Palestinian themes,” including a children’s coloring book that contained the Israeli-contested sentence “From the river to the sea.”
The two men said that police confiscated about 300 books for examination, but all were eventually returned except for eight, including the coloring book, which they said had been sent for review and was not on sale.
After appearing in Jerusalem Magistrates Court on Monday, the charges against them were downgraded to a public order offense, but they were ordered to spend another 24 hours in detention, followed by five days of house arrest.
Their arrest sparked international condemnation, with journalists and diplomats closely following the case. In Israel, the incident also drew criticism, with journalist Noa Simone calling the raid a “fascist act” that “evokes frightening historical associations with which every Jew is very familiar.”
Recalling their time in detention, the booksellers described the conditions as “simply unfit for a human to live in.” They said they were held in overcrowded, windowless cells without heating, forced to sleep on mats on a concrete floor in near-freezing temperatures — treatment they likened to psychological torture.
While their experience was harsh, they acknowledged that their situation could have been far worse without international attention and support.
“If we were not working in a bookstore with an international outreach with good international connections, what would have happened?” Mahmoud asked. “Probably the case would have been manipulated against us.”
He also warned of the broader implications of their arrest. “The question is how far are they going to go? If they’re attacking Palestinian bookstores now, they will be attacking Israeli bookstores next.”
