Breaking into the house of Jawad Siam
Joint teams from the Israeli police and Jerusalem municipality broke into the house of Jawad Siam, director of Wadi Hilweh Information Center, on Tuesday afternoon in the town of Silwan under the pretext of “unlicensed” building. Siam explained that the forces and municipality employees suddenly broke into his house without have a permit to break in. They also tried to arrest one of the family members, Majd Gaith , when he asked them about the permit. Siam added that an individual from the municipality called him while standing outside his home and threatened to arrest one of his family members. Jawad Siam pointed out that he is renovating the roof of his house as he has suffered in the last few years from leakage of water in the winter, and that he is not doing any construction work or adding to the family house that has been established since 1952. Siam noted that Elad settlers and an official from the Nature and Parks Authority take pictures of houses in Silwan on a daily basis as well as monitoring the residents in order to impose fines on them for any reason. Witnesses said that one police man tried to run over a female journalist that was present in the area and preparing a documentary about Silwan; another policeman told him: “you should have run her over.”
