Israel
New Israeli security minister to ban Palestinian flags from flying in public
Itamar Ben-Gvir said displaying the flags is a 'form of supporting terror'
January 9, 2023 12:22
Itamar Ben-Gvir said displaying the flags is a 'form of supporting terror'
January 9, 2023 12:22Israel’s controversial public security minister has told police to forbid the display of Palestinian flags in public.
“It can’t be that lawbreakers wave terror flags, incite and support terror, and therefore I have ordered that terror-supporting flags be removed from the public space. Identifying with a terrorist and with harming IDF soldiers is not protected under freedom of speech," the Otzma Yehudit party leader said on Sunday.
“Minister Ben Gvir sent the police commissioner’s office an order stating that all police officers of any rank are authorised in the course of police work to pull down flags of the Palestinian Authority,” a statement from the minister's office read.
Mr Ben Gvir claimed the instruction “relies on the fact that displaying a [Palestinian] flag is a form of supporting terror,” referring to the flag's use by the PLO.
While displaying the flag is not illegal, Israeli police have wide-ranging powers to restrict displays that "threaten public order".
The right-wing minister reportedly locked horns with police chief Kobi Shabtai last week after the former complained that public celebrations including the flag took place in the Arab-majority town of ‘Ara near Haifa to mark the return of a local man from prison. Karim Younis completed a 40-year jail sentence on terror charges after killing a soldier in 1980.
Last year, Mr Ben Gvir’s predecessor Omer Barlev requested that police limit the confiscation of flags during public events.
In May 2022 Israeli police were criticised after removing Palestinian flags away from attendees at the funeral of al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.
Ben-Gvir has previously advocated for the expulsion of Arab-Israelis who “are not loyal” to the state and his party supports the deportation of "Arab extremists" regardless of citizenship, including Party Joint List chairman Ayman Odeh, and the Neturei Karta anti-zionist Jewish group.
The flag's Pan-Arab colours of black, white, green, and red, were inspired by the iconography used across the then-Ottoman lands during the 1916 Arab Revolt and adopted as the official flag of the PLO in 1964.
It was then adopted as the flag of the Palestinian government in 1988.
Public displays of the Palestinian flag have never been explicitly banned in Israel, but were restricted under a 1967 law that criminalised the flags of any group the state considered a terrorist organisation.
The flag's status remained unchanged until the 1993 Oslo Accords, when it was officially recognised as that of the Palestinian Authority and public displays were decriminalised in Israel.