Jerusalem - When Israeli police showed up at the maps and survey department of
the Arab Studies Society's office in Jerusalem last month, director Khalil Tufakji was surprised to receive a six-month shutdown order.
Police proceeded to confiscate computers and the main server, along with posters and maps that had hung on the walls. Tufakji, along with the equipment, was swiftly transferred to the Jerusalem-based Moscobiyeh interrogation centre, also known as the Russian Compound.
The Israeli order alleged that Tufakji's office was working for the Palestinian Authority (PA), and police later accused the office of investigating land sales to Israelis on behalf of the PA.
But four hours after his arrest, Tufakji was released and his equipment returned, untouched. The department was reopened a couple of days later. Today, inside Tufakji's modest office, a mark on the wall where an aerial photograph used to hang was the only sign a raid had taken place.
"I have no idea why they took it," Tufakji said of the photograph, which showed settlement development in occupied East Jerusalem. "I got it from the Israeli side. None of this is secret. We collect and analyse information; this is what we do here."
The maps and survey department was established in 1983 to monitor settlement expansion and produce maps of the occupied Palestinian territories [Ylenia Gostoli/Al Jazeera]
The maps and survey department was established by the late Palestinian politician Faisal Husseini as part of the Arab Studies Society in 1983. Its goal is to monitor settlement expansion and land use and to produce detailed maps of the occupied Palestinian territories. The office has also mapped pre-1948 Palestinian property in West Jerusalem and produced studies of Israel's policies.
After it was initially closed in 1996 by Israeli authorities amid a tense political climate, the department moved from another location in occupied East Jerusalem to Orient House, then the seat of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Orient House was itself shut down in 2001 at the outset of the second Intifada. Dozens of Palestinian institutions, including the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce, would meet the same fate in subsequent years, according to the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem.
Since 2001, the maps and survey department has continued its work from the occupied West Bank as part of the Arab Studies Society, an NGO whose funders include the United Nations Development Programme and whose projects have been sponsored by the European Union.
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