Israeli police raid renowned Palestinian bookstores in East Jerusalem

By CNN

Published February 10, 2025 12:02 PM

CNN

By Kareem Khadder, Abeer Salman and Irene Nasser, CNN

(CNN) — Israeli police raided two Palestinian bookstores in occupied east Jerusalem on Sunday, confiscating books and arresting one of the owners and his nephew, according to their family members.

CCTV footage shared by the owners, four brothers from the Muna family, shows police officers putting books in trash bags at one of the branches of the Educational Bookshop, a decades-old respected institution with Arabic- and English-language branches.

“They did throw some books on the ground but the Arabic (language) store is where the material damage was,” store owner Iyad Muna told CNN.

Photos shared by Muna of the Arabic-language store show books, notebooks and writing materials scattered on the ground.

Israeli police said in a statement Monday that two people were arrested on suspicion of “selling books containing incitement and support for terrorism.”

“The suspects who allegedly sold the books were taken into custody by police detectives,” the police spokesperson’s unit said.

An Israeli court on Monday extended the detention of the two men – Mahmoud and Ahmed Muna – by 24 hours, to be followed by five days of house arrest. Police had originally asked for their detention to be extended for eight days while the investigation continued.

The pair’s lawyer, Nasser Odeh, told CNN on Monday that he was “surprised” by the Israeli police’s request for an extension of the men’s detention. “During the proceedings, we legally argued that this search order was not based on solid grounds,” he said.

“We also argued that the books in question discuss Palestinian history, human rights and the suffering experienced by the Palestinian people and various communities. Moreover, we asserted that these books do not pose any threat or danger and do not support the allegations made against them,” Odeh continued.

Representatives of diplomatic missions from the European Union, several EU member states, the United Kingdom and Brazil were present in court ahead of the hearing, according to a CNN journalist present.

Israeli police said that “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.”

Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for Palestinian Territories, said she was “shocked by the raid” on the bookstores, which she called “an intellectual lighthouse and family-run gem resisting Palestinian erasure under apartheid.”

Albanese also urged the international community in Jerusalem to “show up, stand with the Muna family, and protect this vital hub.”

This has been updated with additional developments.

Correction: This article previously referred to “The Time Has Come” group as “Ad Kan.” The two groups are separate entities, and the comments in this article are those of “The Time Has Come.”

CNN’s Ivana Kottasová and Michael Schwartz contributed to this reporting.