Israeli leader approves construction in east Jerusalem

The Islamic Movement was founded in the 1970s as both a political party and a provider of religious and welfare services.

Salah is regarded as an outspoken critic of Israel and has organized protests since the late 1990s against Israeli extremists entering the Noble Sanctuary, Jerusalem’s religious complex that encloses the Dome of the Rock, the al-Aqsa mosque and the site of two destroyed biblical temples.

In a separate development, Israel also said it had approved the construction of hundreds of homes in a Jewish settlement in east Jerusalem.

Security forces later closed 17 organizations affiliated with the Islamic Movement in Israel, seizing cash, documents and computers, according to police. They seized records from offices of several of them, and froze bank accounts.

Shiekh Raed Salah, the leader of the movement, has been convicted recently for alleged incitement in a speech he made eight years ago, which shows that Israel already has all the legal tools that a state needs to suppress any illegal act done by any person or organisation.

“All these measures taken by the Israeli establishment are unjust and unacceptable”, Salah said in a statement.

Salah is due to start an 11-month prison term next week after an Israeli court found him guilty of incitement over a sermon he delivered in Jerusalem in 2007.

In a statement, the government claimed the movement is affiliated with the region-wide Muslim Brotherhood organisation, which has ties to the Palestinian Islamic militant Hamas group and is committed to Israel’s destruction.

Some questioned whether the ban would further stoke tensions and also harm legitimate political debate.

Moreover, the use of the label of “terrorist” to justify the anti-democratic political persecution of the Northern Islamic Movement and the Morabitat not only gravely endangers the possibility of Palestinian liberation, but the rights of all citizens under Israeli rule.

Members of Israel’s Arab minority, who make up about 20 percent of the population, have citizenship but suffer widespread discrimination in jobs, housing and social services.

Part of Israel’s justification for criminalising the Northern Islamic Movement on Tuesday is that the group raises “tension on the Temple Mount”. “The northern branch of the Islamic Movement is a separatist, racist group that does not recognize the institutions of the State of Israel, denies its right to exist, and calls for replacing it with an Islamic Caliphate in its place”.

Ghanem said it was preposterous to claim that the Islamic Movement shared common ground with Islamic State.

The surge in violence across Israel, Jerusalem and the Israeli-occupied West Bank has been fuelled in part by a dispute over access to a site in Jerusalem holy to both Muslims and Jews.

But Netanyahu – who was accused of racism when he complained on election day last March that his left-wing opponents were getting Arabs to vote “in droves” – is under public pressure to take strong action to stem the worst Israeli-Palestinian violence since the 2014 Gaza war.

Abu Arar said that Islamic Movement was not responsible for the recent violence.

Other measures Israel has pursued in recent days have included controversial demolitions of homes of suspected attackers, which have sparked clashes, such as on Monday when Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinians in the West Bank.