Palestinian flags have been banned in public spaces in Israel and will be forcibly removed if they are “perceived” to threaten public order, according to a new directive signed by Israel’s new national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
While the Palestine Liberation Organization or PLO flags are not officially outlawed under current Israel law thanks to the Oslo Accords signed in Washington, D.C. in 1993, Ben-Gvir, who heads a far-right ultra-nationalist party in the new government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, implied they should be. “Today I directed the Israel police to enforce the prohibition of flying any PLO flag that shows identification with a terrorist organization from the public sphere and to stop any incitement against the State of Israel,” Ben-Gvir wrote on Twitter Sunday.
Palestinian flags were also forcibly removed last May during the funeral of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, where her pallbearers were beaten. She was killed by Israeli security forces as she covered a military raid on the Jenin refugee camp.
Last week, a Palestinian prisoner serving time for the murder of an Israeli soldier in 1983 waved a Palestinian flag when he was released from prison, which prompted the ban.
The crackdown follows one of the harshest anti-Palestinian weeks in recent memory, with the new Netanyahu government seemingly determined to squeeze the PLO. On Friday, Israel withheld almost $40 million in Palestinian tax revenues, which are not earmarked for victims of Palestinian militant attacks. Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh, warned that such sanctions were harmful to the Palestine Liberation Organization, and will “promptly lead to its collapse,” according to an interview in Haaretz on Monday.
Israel also revoked the travel permit for Palestinian foreign minister Riad al-Malki when he was still in the air, en route back from the inauguration of new Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Sunday. Three other diplomats traveling in his entourage were also denied easy access back into the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Additionally, Israel imposed a moratorium on Palestinian construction projects in the area.
The hard line approach is in direct retaliation to the UN General Assembly’s vote to refer Israel’s 55-year occupation of the West Bank to the International Court of Justice, on the request of the Palestinian Authority, which Netanyahu called an “extreme anti-Israel” tactic on Sunday.
