Israeli police raid Palestinian bookshop in east Jerusalem, claiming incitement to violence

Booksellers Ahmad, left, and Mahmoud Muna appear in court after their arrest during an Israeli police raid of their long-established Palestinian-owned Educational Bookshop in east Jerusalem, Monday, Feb. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

JERUSALEM — Israeli police have raided a long-established Palestinian-owned bookstore in east Jerusalem, detaining the owners and confiscating books about the decades-long conflict. The police said the books incited violence.

The Educational Bookshop, established over 40 years ago, is a hub of intellectual life in east Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed to its capital in a move not recognized internationally. Most of the city’s Palestinian population lives in east Jerusalem, and the Palestinians want it to be the capital of their future state.

The three-story bookstore that was raided on Sunday has a large selection of books, mainly in Arabic and English, about the conflict and the wider Middle East, including many by Israeli and Jewish authors. It hosts cultural events and is especially popular among researchers, journalists and foreign diplomats.

The bookstore’s owners, Ahmed and Mahmoud Muna, were detained, and police confiscated hundreds of titles related to the conflict before ordering the store’s closure, according to May Muna, Mahmoud’s wife.

She said the soldiers picked out books with Palestinian titles or flags, “without knowing what any of them meant.” She said they used Google Translate on some the Arabic titles to see what they meant before carting them away in plastic bags.

Police raided another Palestinian-owned bookstore in the Old City in east Jerusalem last week.

In a statement, the police said the two owners were arrested on suspicion of “selling books containing incitement and support for terrorism.”

As an example, the police referred to an English-language children’s coloring book entitled “From the River to the Sea,” a reference to the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea that today includes Israel, the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Palestinians and hard-line Israelis each view the entire area as their national homeland. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government is opposed to Palestinian statehood, has said Israel must maintain indefinite control over all the territory west of the Jordan.

Israeli-Palestinian tensions have soared since Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack out of Gaza triggered the war there. A ceasefire has paused the fighting and led to the release of several Israeli hostages abducted in the attack as well as hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. Tensions have also soared in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in the Oct. 7 attack and abducted around 250 people. The war the followed has killed over 47,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It does not say how many were fighters. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want all three territories for their future state. The last serious and substantive peace talks broke down after Netanyahu returned to power in 2009.

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By Mahmoud Illean And Natalie Melzer

Melzer reported from Nahariya, Israel.