Racist lawmakers have put forth a bill to outlaw a top panel of Arab-Palestinian community leaders that includes representatives of Hadash and Arab parties, city mayors and major organizations. The Knesset National Security Committee on Sunday discussed the legislation proposing to ban the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, and called for an investigation of its leaders on suspicion of “supporting terror.” The bill is sponsored by far-right Otzma Yehudit MK Limor Son Har-Melech and Likud MK Amit Halevi.

Mohammad Barakeh, Head of the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, during a United Nations International Meeting on the Question of Palestine (Photo: UN)

The committee was set up after the Land Day protests in March 1976, in the early 1980s, as an extra-parliamentary umbrella organization for the Arab community, and is currently led by a prominent member of the Communist Party of Israel and a former Hadash MK Mohammad Barakeh.

MK Ahmad Tibi (Hadash-Ta’al) rejected the demand and said any political leadership has the right to express positions that contradict the positions “of the Government, the occupation and the settlements.” He added: “Anyone who believes the leadership of the Higher Monitoring Committee will toe the line of the consensus that is leaning more and more towards the extremist right, is mistaken. No meeting such as this will deter the Arab public. Those times have passed. We are resisting those who are killing our people; [we are resisting] the occupation and the fascists.”

MK Aida Touma Sliman of Hadash-Ta’al said the proposal is “political persecution aimed at suppressing any possibility of the Arab population acting as a national group, with national rights.” According to her, the goal of the Monitoring Committee is to “coordinate the efforts and struggles,” and to protect the interests of the Arab public. “It bothers people, I know. We are against the occupation, which will eventually have to be lifted,” she said.

Moran Maimoni of the Abraham Initiatives organization said outlawing the Monitoring Committee would deal a fatal blow to the freedom of expression of the Arab public in Israel. “The state invests billions in narrowing the gap between the Jewish and Arab populations, and such a decision would justifiably strengthen the Arab public’s sense that it is oppressed. This is an anti-democratic measure, and we object to it unequivocally,” she said.

Committee Chair MK Zvika Fogel (Otzma Yehudit), a former occupation army officer, summed up the meeting, saying “The Monitoring Committee cannot continue in its current format. The leaders of the Monitoring Committee must be investigated. I was interrogated for six hours by Lahav 443 (Israel Police’s National Crime Unit) for saying much less than what they said. If necessary, they should be put on trial and imprisoned.” The National Security Committee, he said, recommends to outlaw the Monitoring Committee and interrogate its leaders, “because their actions harm the State of Israel’s very existence.”

After the meeting, Barakeh told Haaretz in a statement that the bill’s purpose is “to reduce the scope of discourse and political action of Arab society by damaging its legitimacy among the public in general and the Arab public in particular.”

Related: https://maki.org.il/en/?p=27697