Israel closes Palestinian map bureau, arrests head

Israeli police on Tuesday closed a Palestinian research centre in Jerusalem and briefly arrested its director, a prominent cartographer, accusing him of working for the Palestinian security services. The office of cartography in occupied east Jerusalem was shut down for six months, a police statement said. Israeli officials accused its head Khalil Tafakji of working with the Palestinian Authority to monitor the sale of land by Palestinians to Israeli Jews in east Jerusalem. Israel seized east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it in moves never recognised by the international community.