Ben Gvir wants to ban the Palestinian flag. Here’s why it won’t work
Israeli police confiscate a Palestinian flag from a demonstrator in Sheikh Jarrah, occupied East Jerusalem, 31 December 2021
Oren Ziv writes in +972 on 10 January 2023:
On Sunday [8 January], Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir issued a new directive ordering police to crack down on the flying of Palestinian flags in public spaces. The directive comes in the wake of two events over the past week in which the appearance of Palestinian flags made headlines: the celebratory reception of released Palestinian prisoner Karim Younis in the northern village of ‘Ara, and an anti-government demonstration in Tel Aviv where a few protesters waved the Palestinian flag amid a sea of Israeli flags.
But despite all the noise, there is nothing new here. The Palestinian flag (routinely referred to by Israeli leaders and right-wing commentators as the “PLO flag”) has, for much of Israel’s history, been viewed as a threat to the state. Over the past few years, the flag’s appearance in public spaces has increasingly drawn the ire of right-wing leaders — including, notably, during various events marking Nakba Day on university campuses around the country last year. Ben Gvir’s new directive represents just the latest step in Israel’s intensifying war on the Palestinian flag.
More than anything, the directive illustrates the Israeli right’s fear of any symbol that seeks to remind it that, despite Israel’s best efforts, the Palestinian people refuse to disappear, and no amount of repression will help. Palestinians, who live under colonialism, occupation, and apartheid, won’t go quietly into the night. On the contrary, one can assume that Ben Gvir’s directive will lead to the opposite result: more flags in the public space, at the cost of increased police violence and arrests.
What does the law say?
According to Israeli law, flying the Palestinian flag is completely legal. After the signing of the Oslo Accords, which initiated official relations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Israel’s attorney general stated that the public had no interest in criminalizing those who raised the flag. In 2014, Deputy Attorney General Raz Nizri stated that Palestinian flags can be removed only when “there is concern at the level of high probability that the waving of the flag will lead to a serious violation of public peace,” or when “a real suspicion arises that waving the flag constitutes an offense of identification with or sympathy for a terrorist organization.”
Israeli courts have also ruled several times that waving Palestinian flags is legal, and that police are only allowed to prevent it if there is a fear of disturbing the public order.