TEL AVIV: Israel’s national security minister has ordered police to ban Palestinian flags from public places in the latest crackdown by the country’s new hard-line government.
Itamar Ben-Gvir’s order follows a series of other punitive steps against the Palestinians since taking office late last month.
“Today I directed the Israel Police to enforce the prohibition of flying any PLO flag that shows identification with a terrorist organization from the public sphere and to stop any incitement against the State of Israel,” Ben-Gvir announced on Twitter.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government has moved quickly against the Palestinians in retaliation for a Palestinian push for the UN’s highest judicial body to give its opinion on Israel’s 55-year military occupation of the West Bank.
It has withheld nearly $40 million in Palestinian tax revenues and said it will transfer the money to victims of Palestinian militant attacks, stripped Palestinian officials of VIP privileges and even broke up a meeting of Palestinian parents discussing their children’s education, claiming it was unlawfully funded by the Palestinian Authority.
Ben-Gvir, a far-right firebrand known for his anti-Arab rhetoric, drew widespread international condemnation when he visited Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site last week.
The repeated moves have the potential to increase tensions after the deadliest year of the Israel-Palestinian conflict in nearly two decades, according to a report by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem.
Ben-Gvir’s latest order is not the first battle over flying the Palestinian flag.
The red, green and white Palestinian flag carries great symbolism in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Last May, Israeli riot police beat pallbearers at the funeral for slain Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, causing them to nearly drop the casket. Police ripped Palestinian flags out of people’s hands and fired stun grenades to disperse the crowd.
Israel once considered the Palestinian flag that of a militant group akin to the Palestinian Hamas or the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah. But after Israel and the Palestinians signed a series of interim peace agreements known as the Oslo Accords, the flag was recognized as that of the Palestinian Authority, which was created to administer Gaza and parts of the occupied West Bank. Israel opposes any official business being carried out by the PA in east Jerusalem, and police have in the past broken up events they alleged were linked to the PA.
Netanyahu told his Cabinet on Sunday the measures against the Palestinians were aimed at what he called “an extreme anti-Israel” step at the UN
Israel’s Palestinian citizens make up 20 percent of the population and they’ve had a turbulent relationship with the state since its creation in 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were forced to flee in the events surrounding the establishment of the state of Israel.
Those who remained became citizens, but have long been viewed with suspicion by some Israelis because of their ties to Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.
The Palestinians seek all three areas for a future independent state. Netanyahu’s new government is dominated by hard-liners who oppose Palestinian statehood.
Israel’s Ben-Gvir bans Palestinian flag-flying in public
https://arab.news/b6tqq
Israel’s Ben-Gvir bans Palestinian flag-flying in public
- Israel revoked the Palestinian foreign minister’s VIP travel permit
- Ben-Gvir is an ultranationalist with a long record of anti-Arab rhetoric and stunts who now oversees the police
Trial opens in Tunisia of NGO workers accused of aiding migrants
- Aid workers accused of assisting irregular migration to Tunisia went on trial on Monday, as Amnesty International criticized what it called “the relentless criminalization of civil society”
TUNIS: Aid workers accused of assisting irregular migration to Tunisia went on trial on Monday, as Amnesty International criticized what it called “the relentless criminalization of civil society” in the country.
Six staff members of the Tunisian branch of the France Terre d’Asile aid group, along with 17 municipal workers from the eastern city of Sousse, face charges of sheltering migrants and facilitating their “illegal entry and residence.”
If convicted, they face up to 10 years in prison.
Migration is a sensitive issue in Tunisia, a key transit point for tens of thousands of people seeking to reach Europe each year.
A former head of Terre d’Asile Tunisie, Sherifa Riahi, is among the accused and has been detained for more than 19 months, according to her lawyer Abdellah Ben Meftah.
He told AFP that the accused had carried out their work as part of a project approved by the state and in “direct coordination” with the government.
Amnesty denounced what it described as a “bogus criminal trial” and called on Tunisian authorities to drop the charges.
“They are being prosecuted simply for their legitimate work providing vital assistance and protection to refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in precarious situations,” Sara Hashash, Amnesty’s deputy MENA chief, said in the statement.
The defendants were arrested in May 2024 along with about a dozen humanitarian workers, including anti-racism pioneer Saadia Mosbah, whose trial is set to start later this month.
In February 2023, President Kais Saied said “hordes of illegal migrants,” many from sub-Saharan Africa, posed a demographic threat to the Arab-majority country.
His speech triggered a series of racially motivated attacks as thousands of sub-Saharan African migrants in Tunisia were pushed out of their homes and jobs.
Thousands were repatriated or attempted to cross the Mediterranean, while others were expelled to the desert borders with Algeria and Libya, where at least a hundred died that summer.
This came as the European Union boosted efforts to curb arrivals on its southern shores, including a 255-million-euro ($290-million) deal with Tunis.
