The war on Gaza, one year on: the erosion of Palestinian citizenship in Israel
Police arrest a protestor during a demonstration aganst the war on Gaza, Haifa, 6 September 2024
Adalah reports on 8 October 2024:
One year after the outbreak of the war, the Middle East region is facing widespread devastation and overwhelming human rights and humanitarian crises.
…. …. ….
One year on, the war has also starkly exposed the fragility of the citizenship rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel (PCI) and the deep inequalities embedded within it, with the state often treating them as an enemy population. The increasingly precarious, inferior and conditional nature of this citizenship is evident from Israel’s enactment of racist laws and policies, such as imposing a total ban on the right to protest exclusively in Palestinian towns; withholding the bodies of deceased PCI as bargaining chips; and arresting, criminalizing or bringing disciplinary charges against students, workers, lawyers, and activists for legitimate political speech on social media against the genocide in Gaza.
…. …. ….
Crackdown on Free Speech of PCI
Over the past year, Israeli authorities intensified their suppression of speech by Palestinians – both on the streets and online – as part of a broader discriminatory policy targeting PCI to silence opposition to the war on Gaza. Israeli police have arrested and detained demonstrators as well as social media users, charging many under the 2016 Counter-Terrorism Law with “supporting terrorism” and/or “incitement to terrorism”. Adalah has represented protesters and activists, the vast majority of whom are PCI, in approximately 50 detention cases, defending their right to free expression.
Police data shows that, from 7 October 2023 to 1 May 2024, the state filed 162 indictments for “incitement to terrorism”. The spike in indictments is striking; for comparison, for five years between 2018 and 2022, only 84 such indictments were filed. Judges have imposed harsh sentences on PCI for speech offenses, with prison terms of up to 18 months. Moreover, those charged under the Counter-Terrorism Law are detained in “security wings” of Israeli prisons, where they are frequently exposed to deplorable conditions and systemic abuse, including verbal insults, physical violence, and threats of sexual assault. The criminalization of dissent almost exclusively targets PCI and Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, while almost no Jewish Israelis have been arrested for incitement to genocide in Gaza or for hate speech against Palestinians, despite the prevalence of such expressions in the public sphere.