Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/JERUSALEM: Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has instructed police to pull out Palestinian flags from public spaces.
According to Reuters, Israeli law does not outlaw Palestinian flags but soldiers and police have the right to remove them when they deem a threat to public order and security.
Order to pull out Palestinian flags
The order from Ben-Gvir, who heads an ultranationalist party in Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government and oversees the police, seemed to have taken a hard line in removing the Palestinian flags.
It follows the release the previous week of the long-serving Palestinian prisoner, convicted of killing and kidnapping Israeli forces in 1983, waved a Palestinian flag while receiving the hero’s welcome in his village in northern Israel.
Ben-Gvir said that waving the Palestinian flag “is an act supporting terrorism.”
Ben-Gvir said that it could not be that “lawbreakers wave terrorist flags and incite and encourage terrorism. I have ordered the removal of the flags supporting terrorism from the citizens’ space and to stop the incitement against Israel.”
Arabs in Israel account for around a fifth of the population and most are descendants of Palestinians who remained within a newly founded state after its 1948 war of independence.
They have long struggled to gain their place in Israel’s politics, balancing their Palestinian heritage with their Israeli people, with many identifying themselves with Palestinians.
