[News] Israel imposing occupation tactics on its Palestinian citizens

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Israel imposing occupation tactics on its Palestinian citizens

Ben White, The Electronic Intifada, 11 May 2010
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11261.shtml

Last Thursday, in the early hours of the morning, a Palestinian 
community leader's home was raided by Israeli security forces. In 
front of his family, the wanted man was hauled off to detention 
without access to a lawyer, while his home and offices were ransacked 
and property confiscated.

While this sounds like an all-too typical occurrence in West Bank 
villages such as Bilin and Beit Ummar, in fact, the target in 
question this time was Ameer Makhoul, a Palestinian citizen of Israel 
and head of the internationally-renowned nongovernmental organization 
network Ittijah.

After being snatched last week, Makhoul's detention was subject to a 
court-enforced gagging order, preventing the Israeli media from even 
reporting that it had happened. This ban was finally lifted 
yesterday, as Israeli newspapers were being forced to report on angry 
protests by Palestinians in Israel without explaining the specific provocation.

It turned out that another Palestinian citizen of Israel, Balad party 
activist Omar Said, had also been arrested, and interrogated by the 
Shin Bet since the end of April. Now, both Makhoul and Said are to be 
charged with espionage and "contact with a foreign agent" -- namely, 
Hizballah. On Monday night, hundreds of demonstrators rallied in 
Haifa to protest against what they call "an escalating campaign to 
crack down on Israel's Palestinian citizens."

The gagging order recalls the Anat Kam case, where for several months 
it was forbidden to report that the former soldier was under house 
arrest and being investigated by the Shin Bet for "leaking classified 
military information." The facts about Kam were first circulated by 
bloggers and campaigners, something repeated in Makhoul's case 
(including the Facebook group 
"<http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=115095168526586>Free Ameer 
Makhoul & Omar Said").

The night raids, interrogations and charges are not isolated 
incidents -- indeed, 
<http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11228.shtml>Makhoul had been 
prevented from leaving the country in April, according to an order by 
the interior minister. Days later, a West Bank Palestinian nonviolent 
resistance organizer, Iyad Burnat, was also banned from traveling at 
the Jordan crossing, en route to, among other things, a conference on 
the Geneva conventions.

Several examples now point to an uncomfortable reality for the 
self-proclaimed "only democracy in the Middle East": practices that 
have long been routine in the military occupation of the West Bank 
and Gaza are being used in Israel to suppress dissent and limit civil 
liberties. The green line is increasingly blurry.

There are the Sheikh Jarrah protests, where marches and rallies 
against the eviction of Palestinians from their homes have been 
targeted by the police, including the arrest of an organizer at his 
home -- only for him to be released without charge and no evidence 
presented. Then there is the trend towards repressive legislation, 
with the so-called nakba law making its way through the Knesset, the 
Israeli parliament, that will ban state funding for any group that 
marks the expulsions of Palestinians in 1948.

Two weeks ago, a new bill was proposed by more than a dozen 
cross-party members of Knesset (MK), which would outlaw any 
organization "if there is a reasonable basis to conclude that the 
organization is providing information to foreign bodies or is 
involved in lawsuits abroad against senior officials in the 
government in Israel and/or officers in the Israeli army regarding 
war crimes." Adalah, one of the groups specifically targeted, stated: 
"Only a state that commits prohibited acts would be interested in 
such legislation."

Arab members of the Knesset are also increasingly under attack. MKs 
Mohammad Barakeh and Said Naffaa have had their parliamentary 
immunity stripped so that they can face criminal proceedings, with 
the chair of the committee which deals with immunity issues reported 
to have suggested that "a serious decision" would have to be made as 
to "whether or not these parties can continue to sit in the Israeli 
parliament, even while they operate against the country."

More recently, a trip by Arab MKs to Libya has been greeted by 
attempts to "strip the members of their immunity," with MK Michael 
Ben-Ari declaring "an historic opportunity to abolish once and for 
all the immunity and rights of Knesset members who hate Israel and 
denigrate the state."

At the heart of this and other cases against Palestinian citizens is 
contact with the wider Arab world. According to Adalah, the "charge 
of meeting a foreign agent" is so broad that it criminalizes "almost 
any Arab who establishes legitimate relations with political and 
social activists in the Arab world."

So why is this happening now? First, it is the latest manifestation 
of a deteriorating atmosphere in Israel, with political dissent and 
human rights groups under attack. Depressingly, there is considerable 
support among Jewish Israelis for this kind of crackdown: one poll 
found that 57.6 percent of respondents "agreed that human rights 
organizations that expose immoral conduct by Israel should not be 
allowed to operate freely."

Second, there is also a specific focus on Israel's Palestinian 
minority. Three years ago, it was revealed that the Shin Bet intended 
to "thwart the activity of any group or individual seeking to harm 
the Jewish and democratic character of the State of Israel, even if 
such activity is sanctioned by the law." This is no doubt in part a 
response to the kind of developments Makhoul talked about in January 
when I met him in Haifa: how "this generation" of Palestinian 
citizens "has grown up with October 2000 [when Israeli police killed 
13 unarmed Palestinian demonstrators in Israel]. The green line 
disappeared -- in terms of thinking, behavior, and consciousness."

Hussein Abu Hussein, the lawyer for both Makhoul and Said, stressed 
the role of someone like Makhoul in being a prominent advocate 
internationally for "the need for accountability" -= in other words, 
"the state has enough reasons to stop this voice." Mohammad Zeidan, 
of the Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA), says that the arrests 
are "clearly political." He believes that for some in Israel, the 
work being done by nongovernmental organizations and Arab parties on 
the international level is "crossing a red line" -- "they want to 
remind us that this is not a democracy."

Ben White is a freelance journalist and writer whose articles have 
appeared in the Guardian's "Comment is free," where this essay was 
originally published, The Electronic Intifada, the New Statesman, and 
many others. He is the author of 
<http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10677.shtml>Israeli 
Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide (Pluto Press). He can be contacted at 
ben A T benwhite D O T org D O T uk.



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