Israel police launch detention campaign against Arabs citizens

Israeli police yesterday launched a wide-scale detention campaign against Palestinian citizens of Israel as part of a harsh crackdown on protests which erupted against the occupation state’s brutal attacks on Gaza, as well as against the planned expulsion of Palestinians from occupied East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood.

Thousands of Israeli border police officers and reserve brigades began work on arresting over 500 Arab-Israelis as part of a campaign codenamed ‘Operation Law and Order’ allegedly hoping to “settle accounts” with the Arabs over their participation in the protests.

As part of the campaign, the forces are carrying out violent arrests, turning up at residences and intimidating minors and families in their impoverished communities across Israel.

Over the last two weeks, Israel has arrested more than 1,550 Palestinian citizens of Israel, and indicted 150 of them, accusing them of causing disorder.

Yedioth Ahronoth reported that 500 of the Arabs, who took part in the demonstrations, were classified by the police as criminals.

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Director of the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Adalah), Hasan Jabareen, slammed the arrest campaign as a “declaration of war against Palestinian protestors, political activists and minors to take revenge against them for their recent political and national positions”.

While Israel has depicted the campaign as intended to restore order and deterrence against “rioters” and “criminals” involved in alleged attacks on “Jews” over the past two weeks, Palestinian citizens of Israel have maintained that it is intended to intimidate and discipline those who participated in the recent protests and crush their resilience and resistance to Israel’s apartheid and colonial regime and settler mob violence.

On the other hand, Jewish mobs involved in attacks against the homes and properties of Palestinian citizens of Israel, including the killing of one in the central city of Lod, have not been arrested or charged.

About 2.5 million Palestinians live in Israel. In a recent report, Human Rights Watch warned that Palestinian citizens of Israel face “institutional discrimination … including widespread restrictions on accessing land confiscated from them, home demolitions, and effective prohibitions on family reunification.”