Local sources reported that two young Palestinian men turned themselves in to Israeli soldiers on Thursday evening after their families received assassination threats from the Israeli intelligence services.
The two men from Nablus went to the Huwwara checkpoint, approximately five kilometers outside the city. The checkpoint one of the most notorious in the West Bank and effectively cuts off Nablus from the cities to the south; civilians will often stand in line for hours waiting to pass through and cars without an Israeli license plate are not allowed to pass.
Wijdan Sarawi, a former Palestinian woman prisoner told Ma’an’s news agency that her eighteen year old son Hamzah Sarawi and his friend Imad Darwish, also eighteen, had turned themselves over to Israeli forces.
She explained that Israeli troops stormed her family house in Nablus on Wednesday morning, inspected the house and damaged parts of its interior under the pretext of looking for her son Hamzah, who wasn’t home at the time.
She added that Israeli army called the family dozens of times telling them that if Hamzah and his neighbor Imad Darwish did not turn themselves over, an undercover Israeli force would assassinate both of them.
Hamzah will be the second of Sarawi’s sons to be detained by Israeli forces. Hamzah’s elder brother Sami is serving a five year term in an Israeli detention center.
