Israel arrests Palestinian-American woman in West Bank. Her family doesn’t know where she is.

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RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Israeli forces have arrested a 46-year-old Palestinian-American woman after entering her home and dragging her out of bed in the occupied West Bank, her family reported Tuesday, who said they did not know where she was for almost two years. days after his arrest.

News of the arrest was released just before US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel on a diplomatic mission seeking to reach a ceasefire in Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The congressman from Samaher Esmail’s home district of Louisiana promised to “get to the bottom” of the case while the State Department said it was investigating the matter.

According to relatives, soldiers broke into the woman’s home in the West Bank town of Silwad while she was sleeping in the early hours of Monday and dragged her out of bed. A video of the incident posted by her son on X her, before her Twitter, showed soldiers surrounding her and putting her in an armored vehicle.

“They entered her house and took her, they took her out of bed,” said her brother, Mubarak Esmail, 35, who lives in the United States. “They didn’t even let her wear the hijab,” the headscarf. The woman lived alone and probably did not listen to the soldiers because the medication she takes for uterine cancer makes her drowsy, he added.

The Israeli army noted that Esmail was detained for questioning for “incitement on social networks.”

Esmail is from Gretna, Louisiana, like the American teenager who was recently killed by Israeli gunfire in a nearby town. The death of 17-year-old Tawfic Abdel Jabbar sparked concern from the White House and an unusually quick commitment by Israeli police to investigate what happened. Details of the investigation have not been made public at this time.

Esmail’s family said she often traveled between the West Bank and the United States, where she managed a family grocery store in Gretna and worked as a tutor at a nearby high school. Her relatives are in contact with U.S. Embassy officials, but say they do not know her whereabouts.

Representative Troy A. Carter, Democrat of Louisiana, was “deeply concerned” about the arrest.

“I am in contact with the US embassy and the State Department to get to the bottom of why she is being held and will continue to gather information about the situation. I pray for your safety,” she stated.

A U.S. government spokesperson said the State Department was aware of reports of the arrest of a U.S. citizen and was “gathering additional information” about the incident, but had no further comment.

Blinken arrived in Israel on Tuesday night, where he is expected to continue his efforts to achieve a pause in the Israeli offensive in Gaza and to curb violence in the West Bank.

Since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7, Israel has also tightened its control over West Bank territory, with typically lethal raids on cities and villages and the detention of dozens of Palestinians, in some cases accused of incitement on social media. .