Why Israel arrested Hamas-affiliated MPs in West Bank
This week Israel arrested Hamas member of parliament Samira Halaika in an attempt to pressure Hamas into a prisoner exchange deal.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) arrested on March 9 Samira Halaika, a Hamas delegate to the Palestinian parliament from the West Bank town of Hebron. Reports of her detention emerged only after the Hamas Change and Reform Party issued an announcement saying Israeli soldiers had raided her home in the early morning hours near Hebron, searched the premises and took her with them when they left.
On March 6, IDF troops raided the homes of and then arrested two other Hamas parliament delegates, Khaled Tafesh and Anwar Zboun, residents of the town of Bethlehem. The three joined a fourth Hamas member of parliament from the Ramallah area, Hussein Abu Kuweik, who was arrested in August 2016.
The IDF didn’t release any statements explaining the arrests, but a Palestinian security source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Al-Monitor that the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) security services believe there’s no real reason for the move because the detained parliament members are not linked to the armed wing of Hamas. In his assessment, the arrests were a tool in the psychological warfare Israel is waging against Hamas to force it to return the bodies of two Israeli soldiers killed in the Gaza Strip in 2014 — Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul — as well as Israeli civilians being held in Gaza.
The members of Hamas' Change and Reform Party were elected in the last PA elections, which took place more than a decade ago, in January 2006. But the parliament has been inactive since the 2007 takeover of the Gaza Strip by the Hamas military wing, and Hamas and Fatah have each set up alternative, temporary bodies.
