The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) has condemned the arrest of Walid Khalid, West Bank office director of the newspaper "Felestenn", at his home in Skaka village, Salfit, by the Preventative Security Service, on Tuesday 18 September 2012. 

MADA Center calls for Mr Khalid’s release and for an end to the practice of security service personnel arresting journalists in the West Bank and Gaza. 

This is the most common violation of media freedoms in the occupied Palestinian territories and incidents have escalated this year. In the first six months of 2012, MADA monitored nine instances of journalists being arrested. Over the last four years, MADA has recorded a total of 113 such cases. 

Journalist Walid Khalid has already spent more than one year in Israeli prisons this year, having been administratively detained from 8 May 2011 until 6 September 2012.

He must be released immediately by the Preventative Security Service and must be allowed to do his job as a professional journalist.

Journalists’ rights and media freedoms should not be abused as part of the on-going internal division between Fateh and Hamas.

Information collected by MADA shows that violations against journalists increase when reconciliation talks between the two parties are revived, and when there is a corresponding increase in the level of tension between the two parties.