Police are illegally threatening and intimidating Arab-Palestinian school children in Israel, in an effort to deter them from participating in street protests. Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel – is now seeking to put an end to such intimidation.

Arab-Palestinian students from Israeli high school protest in downtown Haifa the demolition of homes in Arab communities in Israel, January 24, 2017. (Photo by Mati Milstein)

On January 24, 2017, Adalah sent a letter to Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, Israeli Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh, and Amos Ya’akov, commander of the Israeli police’s Coastal District, demanding that they order officers not to threaten or intimidate Arab school children. Police threats and intimidation of school children are the most recent manifestation of more widespread police tactics aimed at stifling the free political expression of Palestinian citizens of Israel. Plain-clothed police officers paid visits to local Arab school principals in an effort to pressure them to stop students from participating in a protest against the state’s policy of house demolitions in Arab communities which was scheduled to take place in Haifa on the same day.

In the days leading up to the protest, police attempted to prevent it from taking place using additional illegal means, including sending WhatsApp messages in Arabic to individual school children telling them – falsely – that the protest was illegal and that there would be clashes with police in case they went forward with it. Officers also summoned school principals to a Haifa police station to discuss the protests and have the school officials dissuade their students from taking part.

In its letter, Adalah emphasized that claims made by police that the protest was illegal were patently false: “The protest did not require a permit as it was a gathering (as opposed to a march) at which no political speeches were made… Again, contrary to repeated police interpretations, the chanting of slogans during a protest does not count as a speech that would – were a series of other conditions also simultaneously met – require a police permit.”