Israeli police said in a statement Monday that 2 people were arrested on suspicion of “selling books containing incitement and support for terrorism, detectives encountered numerous books containing inciteful material with nationalist Palestinian themes” in the stores.
Among them was a children’s coloring book titled “From the River to the Sea.” The expression is politically controversial in Israel. Some Palestinians use the phrase in support of a homeland between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, but many Jews regard it as a call for Israel’s destruction. Established in 1984 on the central Salah el Dein street, the Educational Bookshop has since expanded and has become one of the most well-known cultural institutions in East Jerusalem.
The original branch sells Arabic books, while the English-language store opened years later is frequented by Palestinians, Israelis and foreigners alike. A third shop, located inside the American Colony Hotel, is popular with diplomats, reporters and foreign dignitaries staying at the historic hotel. The bookshop was founded by Ahmad Muna, a Jerusalemite who worked as a teacher in the Shu’fat refugee camp on the outskirts of the city. According to his son Mahmoud, who now runs the bookshop and was arrested on Sunday, Ahmad would usually spend the morning teaching and then open the shop in the afternoons and evenings.
The shop sells books about Palestinian history, the Arab-Israeli conflict and Jerusalem, as well as contemporary Palestinian fiction, art books, Palestinian cookbooks, reprints of historical maps and art prints.
The group “The Time Has Come,” which lobbies for peace between Jews and Palestinians, said the bookstore and its people “are an important part of the shared future we envision for Jerusalem. The arrest and confiscation not only harm the right to free expression and the freedom of information but also place the city’s future on the brink.”
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