Israeli Police Arrest Leaders of Arab Community Planning Protest Against War in Gaza
Arrest of Arab leaders: Crackdown on antiwar protests
Israeli police arrested Mohammad Baraka, head of the High Follow-up Committee for Arab Citizens, the highest body representing the Palestinian people inside Israel.
Baraka plus another member of the committee, as well as two former parliamentarians, were all arrested on charges of trying to organize a protest against the war on Hamas.
The police have prevented them from staging any public gathering since the beginning of the war because of a state of emergency in the country.
Baraka, along with a former member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, was taken for questioning at the police station in the northern city of Nof Hagalil, the human rights organization Adalah said in a statement.
Adalah’s statement added that the police had also arrested Deputy Secretary-General of the National Democratic Alliance Yusuf Tatoor, former Knesset members Hanin Zoabi and Samy Abu Shahadeh, and member of the High Follow-Up Committee Mahmoud Mawassi, from the city’s Ein Square, for the same reasons.
The Israeli police, however, said in a statement that Baraka was detained for questioning because he “attempted, contrary to the police’s instructions, to organize a protest that could lead to incitement and harm public peace.”
Police emphasized that they “will not allow any attempt to violate public peace or incite and will take strict measures against anyone trying to do so.”
Baraka said after his release: “They want to silence the voice. … Our position is a humanitarian position that is hostile to war and harming innocent people. … They will not silence the voice of the Palestinian Arab masses in the country.”
The head of the National Committee for Heads of Arab Local Authorities, lawyer Mudar Younis, told The Media Line that what happened sets a “dangerous precedent.”
“These arrests are arbitrary and dangerous and are persecuting Arab leaders at home; this is a very dangerous matter,” said Younis.
The persecution of Arab citizens at home [is] not legal, and we call on this institution to retract these arbitrary steps, in addition to releasing all detainees immediately and without any restrictions, and also to stop the war immediately.
“The persecution of Arab citizens at home [is] not legal, and we call on this institution to retract these arbitrary steps, in addition to releasing all detainees immediately and without any restrictions, and also to stop the war immediately,” he added.
Member of the Follow-up Committee and mayor of Arraba, a city in northern Israel, Omar Waked, told The Media Line that Arab citizens of Israel are under attack, and the government is complicit in the campaign against them.
“The arrest of the leaders of the Arab community today is a message to our community, in order to intimidate [us], [preventing] us from participating in any activities, and this is part of the policies of silencing mouths,” said Waked.
For its part, the National Democratic Alliance denounced “the brutal and unjustified attack on the protest initiated by the leaders of the Arab community at home and the High Follow-up Committee against the war and against the bloodshed that continues to this day, as the police attacked and arrested the participants, and which continues its hostile policy against any position or expression of a position, moral and humanitarian, against war and for its cessation.”
The group stressed that “this attack on the leaders of the Arab community is a dangerous precedent that contains a clear political message to silence our national, moral, and humanitarian voice and to reject any voice against the war and to silence the voices of the Arab community at home.”
Mohammad Mahajneh, a resident of Umm al-Fahm, an Arab Israeli city around 20 miles southeast of Haifa, told The Media Line that nothing will stop them from speaking their mind.
“We are citizens of this country, and we have rights, and we will continue to fight for our rights, we are not afraid and these criminal actions won’t deter us,” said Mahajneh.
Molly Malakar, program director at Amnesty International Israel, said in a statement, “This arrest is a dangerous escalation in the series of widespread persecutions launched by Israel against Palestinian citizens of Israel.”
“Monitoring Palestinians’ expression of their opinions by the Israeli police [and] the threat of investigation or arrest has created a horrific situation, as the Israeli authorities have come to consider any expression of grief, and grief over the killing of civilians in the Gaza Strip, as tantamount to incitement to violence or identification with terrorism,” said Malakar.
Most of those detained were released quickly later that day.
