MK Dov Khenin (Hadash) said Monday that he would deliberately disobey a police order not to hold an anti-occupation protest in Tel Aviv, next Saturday night, June 7. As a Knesset member, Khenin has immunity from arrest in such matters, but it was likely that other thousands protesters would also participate in the protest lead by the Communist Party of Israel, the Young Communist League of Israel and Hadash (the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality).

Demonstration in Tel-Aviv against the occupation of the Palestinian territories (Photo: Al Ittihad)

Khenin also slammed police for denying the permit to protest in Tel Aviv in front of the Zionist right-wing Likud party. The peace and communists coalition sought to hold a protest against the occupation of the Palestinian territories on the 47th anniversary of the 1967 Six Day War. According to Khenin, police told him that they would not permit the protest set for a residential area “because it would bother residents.”

In an angry post on Facebook, Khenin wrote that Tel Aviv residents could do with a little “rousing from their slumber” with the protest. “It appears that people living under occupation who continue to pay a high price for their suffering are not worth riling things up a little bit for,” he said. Khenin said that he planned to hold the protest anyway. “We will meet as we always do, Arabs and Jews together, for the sake of Israeli-Palestinian peace, next Saturday in Gan Meir, King George Street, at 7:00 p.m.”