Spokesman of Hamas Movement for the city of Jerusalem, Muhammad Hamadeh said that "the occupation army's arrest of the Palestinian leader and deputy for the city of Jerusalem, Sheikh Muhammad Abu Tair, comes in the context of its ongoing war on the holy city and its stationed people."

The Israeli occupation forces arrested Thursday the deputy Muhammad Abu Tir (71 years), after storming a residential building in the village of Dar Salah, near Bethlehem, in the south of the occupied West Bank.

"We affirm that the occupation’s attempts to suppress the resistance voices that reject its presence in Palestine, and Jerusalem in particular, will fail and that the occupation’s criminality and brutality will not succeed in breaking the steadfastness of Jerusalemites on their land, homes, and every inch of Jerusalem," added Hamadeh.

"We salute Deputy Muhammad Abu Tair, who is held again in the Israeli occupation jails to continue this long series of jihad and patience in prisons," the official stressed.

"Up to this day, Abu Tir has spent more than 36 years in the occupation prisons, not breaking his determination. Prisons don't break the steadfastness of the Palestinian people in facing the Zionist oppression machine until achieving victory and liberation," he continued.