with Hagit Ofran and Lior Amihai
Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent APN's views and policy positions.
Produced by the Foundation for Middle East Peace in cooperation with Americans for Peace Now, where the Legislative Round-Up was conceived.
1. Bills,
Resolutions, Letters
2. The Great 2021 Iron Dome
Supplemental Debacle (cont.)
3. Hearings &
Markups
4. On the
Record
By: Ori Nir
Why Is Israel at War With the Palestinian Flag?
The more things change, the more they stay the same. The Israeli obsession with the Palestinian flag is a good example.
I have been watching video snippets last week of Jerusalem police
officers warning protestors in Sheikh Jarrah that they would disperse them
if anyone dared raise a Palestinian flag.
Then, once the demonstrators took out a handful of tiny postcard-sized flags, the kind that you hold between your thumb and index finger, the police officers indeed went on to shove the demonstrators, beat them, then break and confiscate their flags. They even arrested one of the activists, on charges of waving the flag. A Jerusalem court later dismissed the charge, ruling that flying the Palestinian flag is not illegal.
In fact, the status of the Palestinian flag under Israeli law is still vague. And based on past experience, this issue is certain to reemerge.
As I watched these videos, I thought about the serpentine road that Israelis and Palestinians have traveled in
the past four decades, in their battle over symbols.
The first time I wrote about the Palestinian flag – also known to Israelis as
the PLO flag, a misnomer – was in January 1987. In the column
I then wrote for Haaretz, I described Article 5 of Military Order 101 of the occupation’s legal code,
which decreed, "It is forbidden to hoist, wave or place political flags or symbols, except by permit of
the military commander."
No permit was ever issued, and young Palestinians used to sit in prison for months for waving their flag. The colors of the flag, however, were not outlawed, so Palestinians found creative ways to celebrate in public the black, white, green and red of their flag, such as through their clothing and as shop displays.
When the first intifada erupted, a year later, the flag became ubiquitous in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Young women used to sew them by hand, and young men would climb on electricity poles to hang the flags, risking
their lives – and sometimes losing their lives – in the act.
The practice became so iconic that years later, after the Palestinian Authority took control of West Bank towns, a large monument, a sculpture showing a Palestinian teen climbing a pole with the national flag, was strategically placed in downtown Ramallah, at Yasser Arafat Square.
The war against the symbol of the Palestinian national movement was waged not only in the occupied territories. In 1986, an Israeli Jew from Ramat Gan, a member of the Israeli Council for Israel-Palestine Peace, a small peace organization, was the target of a police investigation for wearing a tiny lapel pin on his shirt crossing the flags of the State of Israel and the Palestinian national movement.
The first intifada ended. Israel recognized the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and negotiated political accords with it, which were supposed to lead to Palestinian statehood.
Did the obsession with the Palestinian flag end? Not quite. While the Palestinian flag made its way to international institutions, even to the Knesset, it was still the cause for action against demonstrators, on both sides of the Green Line, and sometimes even for arrest.
In 2001, the Israeli civil rights organization Adalah asked the Attorney General’s office to clarify the policy. Adalah pointed out that in 1993, following the Oslo accords, then Chief of Police Raffi Peled wrote in a letter to the Knesset that, since the PLO was no longer considered a terrorist organization, waving its flag "is not illegal."
Indeed, through the mid and late 1990s, Israeli authorities hardly bothered with the flag. Two Attorneys General during that period determined that there was no public interest in pursuing flag-wavers.
But the PLO still appears in Israeli government official documents, even today, as a terrorist organization. Therefore, waving the PLO’s flag, as the Attorney General’s office opined in 2001, could be interpreted as identifying with a terrorist organization, which is a crime.
The test, according to the AG’s office then, was whether the flag-waver had "criminal intent," whether he or she "saw himself as identifying with the PLO as a terrorist organization."
The question of intent, the flag-waver’s intent, was the chief rationale that Jerusalem Police offered for taking action against flag-bearing demonstrators in recent months, referring to the intention to identify with terrorists or to incite violence. Can a law enforcement officer determine what a demonstrator’s intent is?
It is ironic that the antipathy to the Palestinian flag is framed as a concern
about Palestinians associating or identifying with the PLO.
Today, in the Palestinian arena, Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Liberation Organization is the last to still endorse a compromise peace deal with Israel. Its agents in the West Bank cooperate with Israel’s security agencies to confront and thwart anti-Israel terrorism, actions which, seen as collaboration with the occupier, consistently diminish popular support for the institution and its leaders.
As Palestinians justifiably view it, the pursuit of the flag-wavers is an expression of Israel’s hostile attitude toward Palestinian nationalism. It’s an expression of the zero-sum attitude toward sovereignty and national rights in the land that lies between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean.
It is propelled by the same spirit that gave birth to the Nation State Law, the same spirit that prompts
Israeli settlers and their allies in the government to dispossess Palestinians of their West Bank land and
their Jerusalem homes.
It is fuelled by the same exclusivist, uncompromising jingoistic spirit, which is driving Israel toward becoming a binational state that is neither politically democratic nor ethically Jewish.
At its 40th anniversary gala on October 7, Americans for Peace Now’s President and CEO Hadar Susskind welcomed six new members to the organization’s Board of Directors. The six are: Larry Gellman, Debra Katz, Marilyn Katz, Joshua Malina, Abby Rapoport, and Randi Weingarten.
A three-year-old Palestinian boy, Mohammed Bakr Hussein, was hit in the head with a rock while sleeping at his home in the South Hebron Hills on September 28, 2021. This escalation started when Israeli settlers attacked a shepherd in the Palestinian village of al-Mufakara. Other Palestinians joined to retaliate against the settlers, prompting over 100 settlers from nearby illegal Israeli outposts of Avigail and Havat Maon to join, according to eye-witnesses. Hussein, who was taken to the hospital in moderate condition, is among a dozen injured Palestinians. Villagers threw rocks in retaliation, injuring three Israelis.
According to reports and video documentation, Israeli settlers damaged 10 cars at Mufakara, destroyed water tanks, and threw stones at Palestinians homes. A Palestinian and two Israeli settlers were arrested by Israeli Police. The settlers were released after one night in detention. Recent events demonstrate the sharp increase in both the numbers and the severity of settler violence.
Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent APN's views and policy positions.
Produced by the Foundation for Middle East Peace in cooperation with Americans for Peace Now, where the Legislative Round-Up was conceived.
1. Bills,
Resolutions, Letters
2. The Great 2021 Iron Dome
Supplemental Debacle (cont.)
3. Heairngs &
Markups
4. On the
Record
“House Democrats remove Iron Dome funding from upcoming budget”
“House Democrats strip funds for Iron Dome from bill to raise debt ceiling”
After reading some of the headlines from early last week you’d be forgiven for thinking that House Democrats had taken a drastic step away from supporting an additional $1 billion replenishment to this crucial Israeli missile defense system the US supports with $500 million annually. The reports on the events in Israel were even more alarmist. But what actually happened? The reality is that the headlines and events of last week were the result of a right-wing messaging campaign around what was in reality a reasonable procedural request.
Produced by the Foundation for Middle East Peace in cooperation with Americans for Peace Now, where the Legislative Round-Up was conceived.
1. Bills,
Resolutions, Letters
2. The Great 2021 Iron Dome
Supplemental Debacle
3. FY22 NDAA –
Update
4.
Hearings & Markups
5. On the
Record