Jaradat was arrested on the night of February 18. It was a bit after midnight and everyone in the house - he himself, his wife Dalal, his 4-year-old daughter Ya'ara and 2-year-old son Mohammed - was sleeping, as was his brother Mohammed, who lives in the same building. The soldiers, 10 or 12 of them, burst into the home and behaved with rare courtesy. They asked for identity cards and when Arafat gave them his, they told him to say goodbye to his family and come with them for detention. His small children, Ya'ara and Mohammed, clung to his legs but the soldiers promised them their father would be home soon.
Jaradat wasn't very experienced in matters of detention. About a decade ago he was arrested once, for a day. He was also wounded once by a rubber bullet. At the time, Musa Abu Hashash, a field researcher for B'Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Territories recorded his testimony, which to this day is kept in the organization's archive.
Jaradat was a strong and athletic young man who, according to his family, had never been ill a day in his life; he was a third-year political science student at the Al-Quds Open University, who loved to play soccer and basketball and earned his living pumping gas at his uncle's filling station. He did not resist arrest. He was wearing a sweat suit as the soldiers accompanied him out of the house; the neighbors relate that after they had gone only a few dozen meters, the soldiers began beating him and his screams were clearly heard.
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