Tel Aviv enacts legislation banning the raising of the Palestinian flag

“The Battle of the Flags” .. a new chapter in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians

The Israeli occupation forces were unable to bring down the Palestinian flag that is raised everywhere.

AFP

In the center of the town of Hawara in the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers stand near an electricity pole over which a Palestinian flag is flying.

Suddenly an Israeli jumps out of his car and swoops down on the flag, pulling it down and tearing it up before the eyes of angry Palestinians, and the soldiers did not move a thing.

“Many martyrs fell for this flag, and it cannot be accepted,” said Dhafer Al-Sayegh, who owns a shop in the area, in a town located on the edge of the road to Nablus, which is used by settlers alongside the Palestinians.

The names of the majority of the shops in Hawara were written in both Hebrew and Arabic, as the town witnessed over the years a commercial relationship far from the tensions of the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

But a while ago, a "war of flags" began between the two parties;

Settlers now live in illegal settlements nearby, frequently entering the town and its suburbs to remove Palestinian flags and raise Israeli flags in their place, which angers the residents and leads to confrontations between the Palestinians and the Israeli army.

In the context of this "flags war", which constitutes a new chapter in the conflict, the Israeli parliament (the Knesset) approved two days ago a law prohibiting the raising of the Palestinian flag inside Israel.

In Hawara, the Palestinians say that the Israeli army, which is heavily stationed in the town, is standing by and watching, refusing to intervene and stop what they call the settlers' "provocations."

The army has blocked bypass roads in the town with piles of dirt and rubble, and patrols the back streets on foot.

"They confiscated the Palestinian flag," former mayor of Hawara, Wajeeh Odeh, told AFP. "For us, the Palestinian flag is a symbol.

It means everything, our dignity, and our right to defend it against the Israelis.”

Enemy country flag

Also in East Jerusalem, which was occupied by Israel in 1967, the flag is a problem.

At the funeral of Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh, who was killed while covering an Israeli military operation in Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, the Israeli police attacked the mourners to force them to remove the flag wrapped in the coffin.

And video footage spread of the Israeli police, hitting the bearers of the coffin, which almost fell to the ground, and chasing the crowds of mourners who raised Palestinian flags.

In a rare scene, thousands of Palestinians raised the Palestinian flag in the streets of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Last Sunday, tens of thousands of Israelis marched in the annual "flags march" through the same blue and white streets of the Old City to mark the anniversary of Israel's 1967 occupation of the eastern sector of the city, which Israelis consider to be the "unification of the city."

"It is illegal to raise the Palestinian flag in Jerusalem, and the police are making arrests on the grounds that the flags are used for provocation," said Dr. Laura Wharton, a liberal member of the city's municipality.

She described the police crackdown on the flags as an attempt by the Israeli far-right to "invent provocations where there are no provocations."

A bill was submitted to the Knesset by a member of the right-wing Likud party, Eli Cohen, to designate the Palestinian flag as the colors of an enemy state.

The bill, which was posted on the parliament's website, states that "waving the flag of those who do not recognize the State of Israel or represent an existential threat (...) is a red line that must not be crossed, and it is different from legitimate protests."

"It is time to end (...) incitement to hatred by strengthening our sovereignty," Cohen said on Twitter.

He added that "anyone who feels that they are Palestinian will get all the help they need on a one-way trip to Gaza."

The Palestinian Gaza Strip, controlled by Hamas, has been under an Israeli siege since 2007. Hamas and the Hebrew state have faced four wars since 2008.

"We are not at war with the Palestinian Authority," says Wharton.

On the contrary, we signed the Oslo peace accords with it, and we are currently witnessing a cycle of using the flag.”

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