Two nights ago, at around 1:00am local time, as the Italian football team booked a place in the World Cup finals, and enthusiastic young supporters were driving through the town, beeping their horns and shouting in celebration, seven heavily armoured Israeli army jeeps made an incursion into the town of Beit Sahour, a suburb to the east of Bethlehem city.

After detaining a man in the Abu Sa'ada neighbourhood, still left with his hands bound together, the soldiers stormed a nearby house, home to the Douka family. The soldiers forcibly removed the daughter, Neveen Douka, 22, and questioned her outside the house, while her parents were forced into silence at gunpoint, eyewitnesses report. The soldiers then took the girl back into her home and ransacked the entire building, before arresting her and taking her to an undisclosed location.

The incursion and arrest comes as a surprise to the normally quiet town of Beit Sahour, with the last incursion of this sort happening some three months ago, but does coincide with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's alleged comments that 'No Palestinians shall sleep this week'.

Neveen Douka now joins some 1300 Palestinian civilians being held in Administrative Detention within Israel without charge or trial.

Three of the seven jeeps it took to seize a girl in the night

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