Palestinians face ‘racial discrimination’ in Tel Aviv bus station

Palestinians face “racial discrimination” at the hands of security guards employed at Tel Aviv Bus Station, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Adalah) revealed on Wednesday. The guards work for Avidar Security Services and it is alleged that racial profiling means that they detain more Palestinians than anyone else.

According to Safa News Agency, Adalah has sent a letter to Israel’s Minister of Internal Security, Gilad Erdan, judicial advisor Avichai Mandelblit and officials at the bus station about the issue. The organisation has called for an end to discrimination by the security guards on the basis of ethnicity and race.

It is alleged by Adalah that internal directives to the guards insist that they should detain Arab citizens if they do not have their ID cards, on the pretext of their “illegal presence” in the bus station. Those detained are kept until the police arrive.

“The choice of who to ask for ID is based on ethnicity and appearance,” said Adalah lawyer Fadi Khori. Such a policy is unacceptable, he added, because it is not based on a policy to inspect all passengers’ ID documentation. “This reflects the racial basis of the issue.”

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