Israeli nationalists wage war against Palestinian flag

SMA NEWS – GAZA
It’s not a bomb or a gun or a rocket. The latest threat identified by Israeli nationalists is the Palestinian flag.

Recent weeks have seen a furore by nationalists over the waving of the red, white, green and black flag by Palestinians in Israel and in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem.

Yet the fracas over the flag tells a broader story about how hopes for peace with Palestine have diminished and about the stature of the fifth of people in Israel who are Palestinian. They have long been viewed as a fifth column because of their solidarity with the Palestinian cause.

Palestinian citizens of Israel see the campaign against the flag as another affront to their national identity and their rights as a minority in the majority Jewish state.

Jafar Farah heads Mossawa, an advocacy group promoting greater rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel.

“The Palestinian flag reminds Israelis that there is another nation here and some people don’t want to see another nation here,” he said.

Tension between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian protesters trying to cross the Tayaseer checkpoint on Monday, where Palestinian medical sources say 25 people were wounded during clashes. EPA
Tension between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian protesters trying to cross the Tayaseer checkpoint on Monday, where Palestinian medical sources say 25 people were wounded during clashes. EPA
In recent weeks, Israeli authorities have gone out of their way to challenge the hoisting of the Palestinian flag.

At the funeral of the well-known Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh last month, police snatched Palestinian flags from mourners, reportedly following an order from a district police chief to ensure those colours did not fly at the politically charged event.

Two Israeli universities were condemned by nationalists for allowing Palestinian flags to be waved at campus events. Israel Katz, a senior opposition politician, urged flag-waving Palestinian-Israeli students to remember the war leading to Israel’s establishment in 1948, saying Jews “know how to protect themselves and the concept of the Jewish state”.

A group promoting coexistence raised the Palestinian flag alongside the Israeli one on a tower block outside Tel Aviv, only for authorities to remove the former hours later.

Those events culminated in a push by opposition legislators to ban the waving of the Palestinian flag at institutions that receive state funding, which would include universities and hospitals among others. The bill passed overwhelmingly in its first reading on Wednesday, 63-16, although several parties in the governing coalition were absent so it may seek to block the bill from moving forward.

“In the state of Israel there is room for one flag: the Israeli flag, this flag,” Eli Cohen, the legislator who sponsored the bill, said from the dais of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, as he pointed to an Israeli flag hung behind him. “This is the only flag there will be here,” he said to applause from some politicians.

Adalah, a legal rights group for Palestinian-Israelis, says waving the flag is not a crime under Israeli law. A police order grants officers the right to confiscate a flag if “it results in disruption of public order or breach of peace”.