Hawzah News Agency – The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) today issued a statement condemning the continued pursuit and arrest of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation forces.

The statement said that the occupation forces had arrested on Friday morning, April, 1st, the correspondent of "Palestine Times Network", journalist Omar Nasr Abu Al-Rub, from his home in the Al-Irsal neighborhood in Ramallah, while the photojournalist, Muhammad Al-Dweik, had been arrested after raiding his house and confiscating his mobile phone and laptop on Sunday morning – April, 3rd.

“The occupation forces arrested the freelance journalist Bushra Jamal Al-Taweel on March 21st, 2022, and she was sentenced to administrative detention for a period of three months,” the statement said.

“It is noteworthy that MADA launched a media campaign in the second half of the last year against the arrests of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation forces with the aim of focusing on the arrests and their danger to media freedom, which will remain a threat to journalists and media freedoms unless the perpetrators are criminalized, noting that "arrest" constituted 8% of all Israeli violations against journalists during the last year.”

MADA called for the activation of United Nations Security Council Resolution (No. 2222) issued since 2015 regarding the protection of journalists, and called on the international community to pressure the Israeli occupation government to release detained journalists and provide them with protection to enable them to carry out their work freely.