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<h1 class="title" id="page-title">Israel arrests activist for
hosting Skype chat with resistance icon Leila Khaled</h1>
<div class="field-author">
<a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/patrick-o-strickland"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel"
datatype="">Patrick O. Strickland</a> </div>
<div class="field-publisher">
<b><small><small><small><a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/electronic-intifada"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label
skos:prefLabel" datatype="">http://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-arrests-activist-hosting-skype-chat-resistance-icon-leila-khaled/13640</a></small></small></small></b>
</div>
<div class="field-publication-date">
<span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2014-07-26T02:20:00+00:00">26
July 2014</span> </div>
<div class="field-body">
<p>Israel, reputedly the only democracy in the Middle East, is
willing to arrest its own citizens for communicating on the
Internet.</p>
<p>That was the experience of Samih Jabarin when he recently
arranged for <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/leila-khaled">Leila
Khaled</a>, the Palestinian resistance icon, to address the
al-Warsheh cultural center in <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/haifa">Haifa</a> — a
city in present-day Israel — via Skype.</p>
<p>As soon as Khaled had completed her opening remarks and invited
questions from members of the audience, three Israeli secret
police officers entered the center unnoticed and quietly
escorted Jabarin, its owner, from the building. He was released
after interrogation later that night (11 July), but al-Warsheh
was closed by police two days later.</p>
<p><a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/shabak">Shabak</a>,
Israel’s secret service (also known as the Shin Bet), had
previously tried to pressure Jabarin into canceling the event.</p>
<p>“The Shabak called me that Friday morning [11 July] and
demanded that I come to their Haifa offices for interrogation,”
he told The Electronic Intifada. “I refused because it was
dangerous — how could I be sure it wasn’t some extremist from <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/im-tirtzu">Im Tirtzu</a>
or another right-wing Zionist group?</p>
<p>“’Okay,’ they told me, ‘we will have to arrest you tonight,’
which they did.”</p>
<h2>Intimidation</h2>
<p>Interrogators “tried to intimidate me by mentioning my
one-and-a-half-year-old daughter’s name several times, just to
show me that they know about my family,” he said. He was also
warned that he would be punished for arranging a conversation
with Khaled, who one of his interrogators called “that scum
terrorist.”</p>
<p>Although Jabarin has not been charged with any offense, he was
threatened with prosecution on numerous different charges. In
the past, <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/palestinians-israel">Palestinian
citizens of Israel</a> who visit Arab countries or make
contact with Palestinians abroad have faced a <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-imposing-occupation-tactics-its-palestinian-citizens/8821">draconian
charge</a> known as “contact with a foreign agent.”</p>
<p>Jabarin said, “We decided to talk to Leila Khaled as a way to
break the division” between Palestinians in Israel and those
elsewhere. “Her history is important to us and it’s part of our
history. We aren’t content watching videos of her talks online
or reading her writing. She’s part of our people and we will
speak to her if we want,” he added.</p>
<p>Best known for her roles in two plane hijackings in 1969 and
1970, Khaled is a member of the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/pflp">Popular Front
for the Liberation of Palestine</a>. During her Skype
presentation, she told dozens of local Palestinian activists
that “you are living under Israeli occupation as well,” like
Palestinians in the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/west-bank">West Bank</a>
and <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/gaza-strip">Gaza</a>.</p>
<h2>“Racist laws”</h2>
<p>“You live under the Zionist occupation and its racist laws
every day,” Khaled added.</p>
<p>Comprising approximately twenty percent of Israel’s total
population, an estimated 1.7 million Palestinians carry Israeli
citizenship and reside in cities, towns and villages across
present-day Israel. According to Adalah, a group which advocates
for the rights of Palestinians in <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/palestinians-israel">Israel</a>,
they face more than fifty <a
href="http://adalah.org/eng/Israeli-Discriminatory-Law-Database">discriminatory
laws</a> that stifle their political expression and severely
limit their access to state resources, including land.</p>
<p>Jabarin is one of a few hundred Palestinian citizens of Israel
to have been arrested since early July. The wave of arrests was
the largest targeting the community since October 2000, when
Israeli police <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/ten-years-later-no-justice-october-2000-killings/9065">shot
dead</a> thirteen Palestinians in Israel during demonstrations
that month.</p>
<p>This month’s protests were held in response to the brutal
murder of sixteen-year-old <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/muhammad-abu-khudair">Muhammad
Abu Khudair</a> in occupied <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/east-jerusalem">East
Jerusalem</a>. Approximately thirty <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/children">children</a>
were among 128 Palestinian citizens of Israel to be <a
href="http://adalah.org/eng/Articles/2303/UPDATE:-128-Palestinian-citizens-of-Israel-still">imprisoned</a>
for longer than a week.</p>
<p>The arrests have continued as Palestinians in Israel stage
almost daily protests against Israel’s ongoing <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/gazaunderattack">military
assault</a> against the Gaza Strip.</p>
<p>On 18 July, Israeli police officers attacked a Haifa
demonstration in solidarity with Gaza, <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.606000">arresting</a>
at least 29 people.</p>
<p>Jabarin said that the closure of al-Warsheh is part of a
broader crackdown on Palestinian citizens of Israel. “The
government is scared of anything that stresses Palestinian
identity inside” present-day Israel, he said.</p>
<p>Two well-known figures — the British member of parliament
George Galloway and the Pakistani-British author Tariq Ali — had
been scheduled to speak via Skype to an audience at al-Warsheh
on 18 July. But their talk has been postponed due to the
closure.</p>
<h2>“Physical separation”</h2>
<p><a href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/ilan-pappe">Ilan
Pappe</a>, an Israeli historian and author of more than a
dozen books, said that Israel’s strategy of dividing
Palestinians politically, culturally and geographically dates
back to the state’s establishment in the wake of the ethnic
cleansing of Palestine in 1948. An estimated 156,000
Palestinians became citizens of the newly-declared state, many
of them internally displaced from their property.</p>
<p>Since Israel occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,
and the Gaza Strip during the 1967 War, Palestinians in Israel
“are ruled differently than those in the West Bank, than those
in Jerusalem and those Gaza,” Pappe told The Electronic
Intifada.</p>
<p>Israel today “uses a policy of ghettoizing Gaza in order not to
have to deal with a Palestinian community inside Israel and the
West Bank together with a Palestinian community inside Gaza,” he
said. “There is a real physical separation.”</p>
<p>Yet Pappe argues that widespread access the Internet and the
rise of social media have proven a challenge to Israel’s policy
of fragmenting Palestinians. “The Internet has in many ways
undone the geographical and political borders that separate
Palestinians,” he said.</p>
<p>Samih Jabarin vows to keep on organizing educational and
cultural activities, availing of the opportunities afforded by
modern technology. “We will open al-Warsheh again even if it
means going to prison,” Jabarin said. “We know our comrades will
continue it. Even if we have to reopen in a different place or
under a different name, we are going to keep doing this as long
as there’s an occupation.”</p>
<p><em>Patrick O. Strickland is an independent journalist and
regular contributor to Al Jazeera English, </em>AlterNet<em>
and The Electronic Intifada. His website is <a
href="http://postrickland.com/">www.postrickland.com</a>.
Follow him on Twitter <a
href="https://twitter.com/P_Strickland_">@P_Strickland_</a></em></p>
</div>
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