AhlulBayt News Agency: Israeli occupation forces continue to target elected members of the Palestinian Legislative Council in the West Bank, with 10 lawmakers currently imprisoned, even though the council has been effectively suspended for years by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Among the detainees are two of the longest‑held Palestinian political prisoners, Marwan Barghouti and Ahmad Saadat, both serving life sentences. The oldest detainee is Jerusalem lawmaker Mohammad Abu Tir, 75.
Abu Tir was rearrested on November 24, 2025, after Israeli forces raided his home in Dar Salah near Bethlehem. He is one of several Jerusalem lawmakers whose residency IDs were revoked in 2006 and who have since faced repeated arrests and forced expulsion from the city.
He has spent nearly half his life in Israeli prisons and is currently held in harsh conditions in an underground section of Nitzan Prison in Ramla under a four‑month administrative detention order.
On September 25, 2025, Israeli forces arrested lawmaker Yasser Mansour from his home in Nablus. Another PLC member, Nasser Abdul Jawad, 57, was detained on August 21, 2025, in Deir Ballut, west of Salfit. Abdul Jawad, an academic and political figure, has spent around 20 years in Israeli prisons.
Israeli forces also arrested lawmaker Anwar Zaboun, 58, from Bethlehem on August 17, 2025. Husni al‑Bourini was detained in October 2024 after a raid on his home in Asira al‑Shamaliya in Nablus, while Khaled Suleiman was arrested in Jenin in August 2024.
Lawmaker Mohammad Jamal al‑Natsheh, 68, was detained in Al‑Khalil in March 2025 and is considered one of the most serious medical cases among Palestinian detainees.
Senior Hamas leader and PLC member Sheikh Hassan Yousef, 73, was rearrested in October 2023. A prominent West Bank figure and one of the Marj al‑Zohour deportees of 1992, he won his parliamentary seat while imprisoned and has spent more than 27 years in Israeli jails.
Rights groups say the detention of elected lawmakers has no legal basis, constitutes political retaliation, and represents a grave violation of international law, democratic norms, and Palestinian self‑governance.
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