Arabs strike as Israel bans Islamic Movement

Israel has signed an agreement granting Palestinian mobile phone carriers 3G high-speed data services in the West Bank.

“To counteract the radicalization we must go back to the situation such as the one in the Middle East of which not the least the Palestinians see that there is no future: we must either accept a desperate situation or resort to violence”, she said.

Head of the Joint Arab List Ayman Odeh asserted the banning was politically motivated and strategically timed after the Paris attacks on Friday to suggest a link between the Israel-based group and ISIS.

Hanan Ashrawi, a senior Palestine Liberation Organisation official, said in a statement that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is cynically exploiting the pain of the innocent victims in Paris … in order to create a misleading linkage and to justify Israeli state terror against the Palestinian people, while presenting Israel as the victim”.

Early Tuesday, security forces raided offices of the movement and 17 associated organisations in Arab communities, police said, seizing cash, documents and computers. Authorities also froze the group’s bank accounts.

Salah is to start an 11-month jail term later this month regarding incitement charges from a 2007 sermon.

“A significant number of the recent attacks were committed against the backdrop of (the Islamic Movement’s) incitement and propaganda”, a statement issued by Netanyahu’s office said.

By denying the Northern Islamic Movement’s claims of Israeli encroachment at al-Aqsa, criminalizing the Northern Islamic Movement, and effectively double-criminalizing the Murabitat, Israel is backhandedly capitalising on the activities of the Temple movement’s provocations at al-Aqsa.

Arab leaders and lawmakers condemned the move, saying it was aimed at “incriminating” all Arabs in Israel. “This is a legitimate political movement…This decision is another step in the persecution of the Arab population, deepening tension between the country’s Arab citizens, and lessening citizens ‘ confidence in legal political organizing”. The umbrella organization held an emergency meeting about the ban and called for a general strike later this week.

Founded in the 1970s, the Islamic Movement of Israel was a political party that called for the establishment of a Palestinian state with Islamic principles. It is headed by Sheikh Ra’ed Salah, the former mayor of Umm el-Fahm in central Israel, and the founder and head of the al-Aqsa Institution for Maintaining the Islamic Sacred Places, a charity that funds restoration projects inside of Jerusalem’s holy sites complex, and one of the relief societies ordered closed this morning.

Under interim peace agreements, Israel controls cellular networks in the West Bank.

This came as forces violently suppressed a rally commemorating the first anniversary of the killing of two Palestinian locals by Israeli police in 2014.

“Al-Aqsa is a Palestinian national symbol”. Since 2001, the Islamic Movement has bused tens of thousands of supporters to the mosque compound every year to strengthen Muslim presence.

The movement also helped form groups of male and female activists, known as “Morabitoun” – loosely translated as defenders of Islamic lands – who spend hours each weekday at the shrine trying to disrupt visits by Jews.

Obama backed Netanyahu in the latest crisis facing Israel, speaking out against recent attacks by Palestinians on Israeli civilians that have sparked fears of a new uprising, or intifada, in the Palestinian territories.

What is astonishing really is how much Israeli Jewish society has become tolerant of such anti-democratic and even fascist acts done by the government toward basic rights, especially against minorities.

The Jerusalem Postreports the homes will be built in the contested Ramat Shlomo and Ramot settlements, which are illegal under global law but considered neighborhoods of Jerusalem by Israel.