Sanaa Salameh-Daqqa is the widow of Walid Daqqa, one of the most prominent Palestinian prisoners in history [Getty/file photo]
The widow of slain Palestinian political prisoner Walid Daqqa will remain in detention in Israel until Tuesday, 2 pm local time, an Israeli court has decided on Monday, days after her arrest.
Sanaa Salameh-Daqqa was sentenced to 10 days of house arrest by an Israeli court in Hadera on Friday, after she was detained in occupied East Jerusalem on a charge of “online incitement,” which was followed by a request by Israel’s far-right Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir to deport her, as well as the revocation of her citizenship.
In the presence of a number of witnesses, the Haifa District Court’s appeal hearing began on Monday over her detention. The hearing followed an appeal filed against the Hadera Magistrate’s Court’s decision, issued on Sunday, to extend her detention until next Wednesday.
The court decided she will be investigated further, reducing her detention to Tuesday instead.
If no new developments are recorded in the investigation by the relevant date, she will be released to house arrest under restrictive conditions, The New Arab’s affiliated website, Arab48 said.
Salameh-Daqqa, who lives in the 1948 village of Baqa al-Gharbiyye, is being investigated by Israeli police for social media posts “inciting against the State of Israel and its soldiers,” which Israeli police claim constitute “incitement to terrorism and identification with it”.
Following her arrest, the Palestinian Prisoners Club called the move “a political decision that comes within the framework of systematic historical revenge operations that the martyr Walid Daqqa and his family were subjected to over decades”.
She was arrested Damascus Gate area of Jerusalem on 29 May, according to Palestinian media, where she was accompanied by her daughter, Milad. The arrest was made by direct order from Israeli Police Commissioner Danny Levy and Ben-Gvir.
Salameh-Daqqa is the widow of Walid Daqqa, a prominent Palestinian activist and novelist who spent almost four decades in Israeli prison.
Daqqa was never convicted of the accusation brought against him – the kidnapping and killing of an Israeli soldier as commander of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
During his time in prison, he authored several books on life in prison, as well as children’s stories.
Daqqa died in April 2024, following a three-year battle with bone cancer, and suffered from medical neglect at the hands of Israeli authorities.
Daqqa is considered among the longest-serving Palestinians in Israeli prisons and an icon of Palestinian resistance.
