The Theatre of the Grotesque: Israeli officials use the law to bully residents of East Jerusalem
El-Hakawati Theater in East Jerusalem
The Haaretz lead editorial on 27 November 2025:
On Sunday, a few dozen Palestinian children from East Jerusalem were readying to perform the musical “Under the Olive Tree” at El-Hakawati Theatre. Costumed in traditional garb, the boys and girls were dancing and singing onstage when police officers, some uniformed and masked, others in street clothes, burst into the hall and ordered the show to stop. “Did you hear what I said? You hear? In five minutes, I want you all out of here!” a plainclothes officer told a theater employee. The frightened children began to cry and flee; one boy vomited. The adults had no answers for them.
The legal justification cited for the raid on the theater is a provision in the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, meant to incorporate the terms of the Oslo Accords into Israeli legislation. Section 3 prohibits the Palestinian Authority from operating in the territory of the State of Israel. Absurdly, the Israel Police, on orders from National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, staged the raid in order to enforce the Oslo Accords.
Ben-Gvir is not the first minister to use the law to bully residents of East Jerusalem. Ministers have signed closure orders and dispatched police to forcefully break up a clown festival, a basketball tournaments, International Women’s Day Events, press conferences and book launches, to name a few. All on the grounds that the PA had some involvement in the event, whether funding, sponsorship or even that the events hosted a figure connected with the PA. In most cases, the PA’s involvement, if any, was tenuous.
The rigid enforcement of one section of the Oslo Accords is grotesque, especially given that Israel has undercut the agreement with its massive construction of settlements and encouragement of dozens of new illegal outposts, farms and communities in the West Bank.
The grotesqueness in this case is particularly striking in light of the colossal failure of the police and the minister in charge of the force in every area, especially when it concerns Arab citizens and residents. The day after the theater raid, data on femicides in Israel was released: In the year to date there have been 43 homicides of women, a 10-year high. Another record is about to be broken in the number of homicides in the Arab community: 230 since the beginning of the year.
Worse still: The police’s violent raid on a children’s performance sends a message that in Israel, the term “innocent Palestinian” is a contradiction in terms, whether the subject is a Hamas terrorist in Gaza Strip or a boy acting in a play in East Jerusalem. This is a proven recipe for despair and violence that encourages the most extreme elements in Palestinian society and provides the international community with further confirmation that Israel seeks to deepen the occupation, the oppression and the apartheid.
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