Israel to indict senior Hamas official for supporting resistance group

Hasan Youssef, a senior official from Palestinian resistance movement Hamas will soon be indicted at an Israeli military court over charges of supporting a resistance group and alleged incitement against the Israeli regime, Palestinian media reports say.

The Palestinian Asra Media Office, which focuses on prisoner affairs, reported that an indictment was expected to be filed against him this week by the military prosecutor’s office.

In an announcement on Sunday, Israeli authorities tied Yousef’s arrest to a speech he gave following a retaliatory operation by a Palestinian in al-Quds’s Old City. The detainees would be indicted in an Israeli military court soon, it said.

The charges against him include incitement to violence and being a member of the Palestinian resistance group.

In November last year, Israeli troops fatally shot the 42-year-old Palestinian man near the Chain Gate, one of the entrances to the al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

Israeli media outlets claimed that the Palestinian man opened fire and was shot dead by troops at the scene.

He was later identified as Fadi Abu Shkhaydam, a resident of the Shuafat refugee camp in East al-Quds and one of the leaders of Hamas resistance movement in the camp.

Israeli forces shoot dead Palestinian man in Old City of al-Quds

Israeli military forces have shot dead a Palestinian man in the Old City of al-Quds over a retaliatory attack in response to Israel

Youssef , a senior figure in Hamas’s West Bank division, later arrived at the Shkhaydam family’s mourning tent to present condolences and give a speech.

Following the speech, Youssef was abducted by Israeli forces and their undercover agents from his home near Ramallah in the occupied territory on December 13.

Youssef has been arrested several times since he helped found Hamas in the 1980s and has spent years in Israeli prisons, mostly in administrative detention.

In July 2020, Israeli authorities freed Youssef in the West Bank after imprisoning him without trial for 16 months. The 66-year-old had also been released from a previous 10-month term of imprisonment in October 2018.

More than 7,000 Palestinians are reportedly held in Israeli jails. Hundreds have been incarcerated under the practice of administrative detention, which allows holding Palestinian inmates without trial or charge. Some Palestinian prisoners have been held in administrative detention for up to eleven years.

Hamas: Arrest of Palestinians cannot weaken anti-Israel resistance in West Bank

Hamas says Israel’s arrest of a group of Palestinians over a recent shooting attack that killed a settler in northern West Bank is a desperate attempt that cannot undermine the resistance in the occupied territory.

Hamas has time and again stressed that the freedom of the Palestinian prisoners would remain a top priority and a national and humanitarian goal for the movement and its supporters.

In a speech delivered on the 34th founding anniversary of Hamas last month, Saleh al-Aruri, deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau, reiterated that Israeli prisoners in the besieged Gaza Strip will not see the light of day until Palestinian inmates held in Israeli jails were released..

Hamas managed to free more than a thousand Palestinian detainees from Israeli jails in the Wafaa al-Aharar (“True Promise of Free Men”) prisoner swap deal with the occupying regime in 2011.

The resistance movement has hailed retaliatory attacks against Tel Aviv regime forces and extremist settlers, stating that the incidents are a natural response to the crimes being committed by Israel on a daily basis.

Palestine urges ICC to probe Israeli crimes after young man killed in West Bank raid

Palestine calls on the ICC to launch an investigation into the crimes of the Tel Aviv regime after a young man was shot dead in the northern part of the West Bank.

Human rights groups have voiced their deep concerns over the increasing number of senior Israeli officials encouraging forces to kill Palestinians even when they are not a threat.

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