First Israel silenced Palestinian citizens. Now it turns to their leaders
Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement, and Mohammad Barakeh, chairman of High Follow Up Committee, arrive for a visit at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City, 19 April 2022
Baker Zoubi writes in +972 on 6 July 2026:
On June 23, after four hours of questioning, Mohammed Barakeh walked out of the police station in the Israeli settlement of Ariel. A longtime community leader and former head of the Jewish-Arab political party Hadash, Barakeh had most recently served from 2015 to 2025 as the chairman of the The High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel (HFC), the main extra-parliamentary body representing Palestinians inside Israel.
After news broke of Barakeh’s interrogation, many Palestinian citizens questioned not why he had been summoned, but why now. Investigators were not concerned with a recent statement, nor with anything he had said after October 7 or throughout Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Instead, they focused on a speech he delivered in Ramallah in 2022.
The interrogation came days after police ordered Barakeh to report to the Ariel police station in the occupied West Bank. He agreed to cooperate with the investigation but asked to be questioned at a police station inside Israel. According to the Haifa-based legal center Adalah, who submitted the request on Barakeh’s behalf, international law gives individuals the right to refuse to engage with or carry out activities in Israeli settlements.
But rather than grant Barakeh’s request, police issued an arrest warrant, detained him, and brought him to Ariel for questioning. He was later released under restrictive conditions, including a one-month ban on entering the West Bank, while police confiscated his two cell phones. Barakeh described the investigation as “political and provocative.”
For current HFC chairman Jamal Zahalka, the case is part of a broader campaign against Arab leadership. “They’re rummaging through drawers to find cases that can be revived specifically now,” he told +972 Magazine after Barakeh’s release. “The right wing is going through a difficult period. All the polls point to the possibility that it will lose power, and when it’s in a situation like that, it will do anything.”