Standing alongside the French ambassador to Israel, Patrick Maisonnave, at the Waldorf Astoria in Jerusalem, the premier said that the terrorists who carried out the assault that killed scores in Paris last week are “barbarians that devour the innocent in their way”.
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Palestinian Arab towns in Israel went on strike on Thursday in protest against the decision by Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon to outlaw the northern branch of the Islamic Movement. This particular project, in the Ramat Shlomo area, has drawn American ire because it was first announced during a visit to Israel by Vice President Joe Biden in 2010.
The recent wave of violence has been fueled in part by claims by Palestinian Muslims that Israel is trying to change the status quo on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. Glaringly absent from the discussion, however, is a serious attempt to understand the perspectives of ordinary Palestinians, and how those views might shape the atmosphere in which teenagers decide to become “suicide knifers”, and politicians and clerics who feel comfortable leveling seemingly outrageous accusations against Israel.
The U.S. Department of State said it extended its condolences to his family and friends.
“We will continue to act against those who incite and who encourage terrorism, wherever they are”, Netanyahu said.
Police closed 17 organizations affiliated with the movement, raided more than a dozen of its offices, and froze the group’s bank accounts.
He said that while 9 percent of his respondents cited the northern Islamic Movement as the group they most identified with, 42.2 percent expressed more generalized support for its ideas and charitable work in an often neglected community. “All these measures done by the Israeli establishment are oppressive and condemned”, Salah said.
The current violence began in mid-September over rumors that Israel was trying to expand the Jewish presence at the hilltop compound that houses the mosque. As Jewish Israelis enjoyed the holy site under heavy police protection, Israel enforced age restrictions on Muslims and clashed with those who had camped out in the mosque the night before to contest the Jewish tours.
Struck by the difference between these incidents and the well-orchestrated shootings, suicide bombings and rocket attacks aimed at Israelis over the last decade and a half, commentators have focused on the motivations of the individual attackers or on a campaign of incitement by Palestinian leaders.
Invoking the memory of the Holocaust, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Europe is forgetting its history by labeling products originating in Jewish settlements on the West Bank.
Kamal Khatib, the deputy head of the Islamic movement, told Middle East Eye how the Israeli government’s decision targets the not just the leaders but the various organisations and associations that provide for their community.
“Al-Aqsa is a Palestinian national symbol”.
However, as the struggles of the Northern Islamic Movement and the Mourabitat reveal, these groups are not “terrorists” motivated by “radical Islam”, but, in fact, are political actors with genuine political concerns.
Political and social desperation cannot explain its religious ideology, yet the Islamic Movement emerged and grew on the fertile ground of the longstanding neglect of the Arab sector by the Israeli government.
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Arabs make up roughly 20 per cent of Israel’s population, holding citizenship rights but frequently suffering discrimination in jobs, housing and public services.
