Israel orders police to remove Palestine flags from public spaces

Israel’s new far-right Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir has instructed police to remove Palestinian flags from public spaces, calling the Palestinian national symbol an act of “terrorism”.

Israeli law does not outlaw Palestinian flags but police and soldiers have the right to remove them in cases where they deem there is a threat to public order.

Sunday 8 January’s directive from Ben-Gvir, who heads the ultranationalist Jewish Power party in Benjamin Netanyahu’s new far-right government and as national security minister oversees the police, appears to signal a hardline and uncompromising attitude towards Palestinian expressions of identity and free speech and pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

The display of the Palestinian flag in Israel has, in practice, long been clamped down on by Israeli authorities, with Palestinians regarding such moves as an attempt to suppress Palestinian identity.

Ben-Gvir’s orders came after a mass anti-government protest in Tel Aviv on Saturday, where some demonstrators waved the Palestinian flag.

Writing on Twitter, Netanyahu on Sunday said the presence of the Palestinian flag at the Tel Aviv protest was “wild incitement”.

“It cannot be that lawbreakers wave terrorist flags, incite and encourage terrorism, so I ordered the removal of flags supporting terrorism from the public space and to stop the incitement against Israel,” Ben-Gvir said.

Palestinian citizens of Israel account for about one-fifth of the population and most are descendants of Palestinians who remained within the state after its formation in 1948, an event known to Palestinians as the Nakba, or catastrophe.

The majority of the population of pre-1948 historic Palestine had been Palestinians. They have long debated their place in Israel’s politics, balancing their Palestinian heritage with their Israeli citizenship, with the vast majority identifying as or with the Palestinians.

Many Palestinians, both in Israel and in the occupied territory, are fearful of the new government’s policies towards them, in light of the strong presence of far-right settler groups within it, with Ben-Gvir in particular previously convicted of inciting racism towards Arabs.

In some of its first moves over the past few days, the Israeli government rescinded the travel permit of the Palestinian foreign minister Riad al-Malki on Sunday and decided to withhold $39m in revenues from the Palestinian Authority on Friday, as we reported.

The decisions were part of an effort to penalize Palestinians for asking the International Court of Justice to give an opinion on the Israeli occupation and settlements, which is not expected to differ from the principles in UNSC 2334

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Comment: The "State of Palestine" occupies the seat of observer non-member state at the UN, where the Palestinian flag is displayed. UNSC 1515 (2003) mandates the two-state solution; with two states living side by side, in peace and within internationally recognized borders - a form of words actually then coined by US president GW Bush. Are Messrs Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir going to climb up the flagpole to remove the Palestinian flag at the UN? I suggest the Palestinians simply grease the flagpole.

The two-state solution is based on the irreducible fact that there are two people on the Israeli and Palestinian territory, none of which is prepared to live under the domination of the other, as Ariel Sharon himself recognized before his leaving the Likud and falling into a deadly coma.

I suggest any discussion should be based on the following principles:

1. The state of Israel is a UN member state and its right to exist should not be challenged. The Jews of Palestine have a right to their own state and currently have it.

2. The Palestinians do not have their own state and just like Israeli Jews have a right to have one in the territories currently occupied by Israel and in Gaza.

3. The occupation of Palestinian territory must cease and the settlements deemed illegal under international law including the Hague 1907 Regulation, the 4th Geneva Convention ans UNSC 2334 must be transferred to the futur state of Palestine with some adjustments relative to the 1967 line such as those described in the Clinton parameters.

4. There can be only one Palestinian government and one Palestinian Authority. No negotiation can be undertaken with Hamas or Islamic Jihad which have not renounced to terrorism and do not accept Israel's right to exist.

5. Negotiations on basis of the two-state solution must start as soon as possible. As the parties left to themselves will go nowhere, the US mut play the role of the honest broker as it is the only one with enough clout with both parties.