Police arrest former Arab Israeli lawmaker for alleged incitement in 2022 speech

Mohammed Barakeh in Sakhnin, northern Israel, in 2024.

Jack Khoury reports in Haaretz on 24 June 2026:

Police on Tuesday arrested Mohammed Barakeh, former chief of the umbrella organization representing Arab citizens in Israel, on suspicion of incitement to terrorism over a 2022 speech.

The Israel Police said that, in a 2022 speech he gave in the Arab city of Nazareth in northern Israel, Barakeh voiced “words of praise and solidarity with terrorists and terrorist organizations, along with calls for struggle against the State of Israel.”

The police also noted that they opened their investigation into Barakeh with the Attorney General’s Office last week after having received a complaint.

According to the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, the umbrella organization for Arab groups and public figures in Israel, the organization Barakeh once chaired, police arrested the former lawmaker in his house in Shefa-Amr, northern Israel, and interrogated him for four hours.

Following the interrogation, the Petah Tikva Magistrate’s Court in central Israel ordered Barakeh to be released on bail under restrictive conditions. Police confiscated Barakeh’s two phones, and the court banned him from entering the West Bank for 30 days.

The Higher Follow-Up Committee condemned Barakeh’s arrest, saying it was yet another instance of political persecution against Israel’s Arab public and its leadership.  “This is a politically-motivated and provocative investigation that is aimed not only at Barakeh personally, but also at the institutions representing the Arab public, headed by the Higher Follow-Up Committee,” it said.

The committee noted that Barakeh, who has also served as a Knesset member as part of the Arab-Jewish Hadash party, had previously refused to appear for questioning at the Ariel police station, located in the West Bank settlement of Ariel.

The Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which is representing Barakeh, said it was considering filing an appeal against the conditions of his release and the police’s decision to confiscate his phones.

Barakeh’s Tuesday arrest is not his first. In 2023, police arrested the former chair of the Follow-Up Committee, along with three former Arab Israeli Knesset members, for planning to hold a protest against the Gaza war.

Footage from the arrest showed officers leading Barakeh to an unmarked vehicle in Nazareth. At the time, the Higher Follow-Up Committee said it planned to hold a protest at 11 A.M. in the center of Nazareth, attended by a limited group of public leaders and party representatives, by invitation only.

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