Sami Ziadna, who died as a result of excessive tear gas inhalation on
Sunday night, was the fiftieth Palestinian citizen of Israel to be
killed by Israeli police since
October 2000.
Then, as protests spread throughout Palestinian communities in
present-day Israel, thirteen unarmed demonstrators were shot and killed
by police officers in the northern Galilee region. Since then,
Palestinian citizens of Israel have endured ongoing police brutality.
An estimated 1.7 million Palestinians carry Israeli citizenship but dozens of
discriminatory laws stifle their political expression and limit their access to state resources, including land and education.
Ziadna, from the town of Rahat in the southern
Naqab (Negev) region, was killed during a funeral procession for Sami Jaar, a 22-year-old Palestinian Bedouin from the same town
who was shot and killed last Wednesday by Israeli police as they clashed with local youth.
Palestinians in present-day Israel held a nationwide general strike
on Tuesday and protests have continued in cities including Rahat,
Beir al-Sabe (Beersheba), Haifa, Nazareth, Tel Aviv and elsewhere. A three-day general strike shut down business as usual the Naqab.
“All in all, this was a very successful strike,”
Nadim Nashif, director of
Baladna,
a Haifa-based Palestinian advocacy group, told The Electronic Intifada.
“Across the Galilee region — even though we are geographically distant
from the Naqab — the feeling of solidarity was strong enough for people
to close their shops and not send their kids to school.”
“Sent a message”
“People really committed to it, especially the youth and school-age
children,” Nashif said, adding that the strikes and protests “sent a
message to the Israelis.”
Meanwhile, Israeli media have “been busy demonizing the Palestinian
Bedouin in the south … in the Naqab,” he added. “Israel wants to give
the image that the police were under attack by the Palestinians, to
portray the police as victims.”
In Haifa, dozens of protesters came out and marched throughout the
city for three consecutive nights, starting on Sunday. Despite a heavy
police presence on Tuesday, approximately a hundred people waved
Palestinian flags and marched down Ben Gurion Street, the city’s tourist
hub.
“With our souls and our blood, we will avenge the martyr,” they cried
out in Arabic. “From the Naqab to Haifa, resist the police,” others
chanted.
Elsewhere, at the
Hebrew University
in Jerusalem, Palestinian students protested on Monday and Tuesday. As
demonstrators began to assemble in front of a campus café on Tuesday,
employees began hanging dozens of Israeli flags on the building.
“It was clear that they did it as a response to our previous
protests,” Farah Bayadsi, a Jerusalem-based lawyer and human rights
activist, told The Electronic Intifada.
Majd Hamdan, the secretary of the
Balad
political party’s student branch at Hebrew University, organized the
protests on campus. “We had a duty to come out and protest on behalf of
the martyrs in the Naqab,” he told The Electronic Intifada. “As student
organizations, we also held strikes in the [Israeli] universities.”
“There were no arrests this time, but there was a large police
presence to intimidate,” Hamdan said. “As a student movement, we are
supposed to play an important role in the struggle against injustice and
police brutality.”
“Arab blood is not cheap”
When dozens of students protested at
Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba on Wednesday, police responded by detaining and interrogating three of the demonstrators,
as reported by the Arabic-language publication
Arabs48.
At
Tel Aviv University, approximately two hundred Palestinian students protested against police violence on Tuesday afternoon.
“The police came out in huge numbers,” Mohammed Osama Eghbariya, a
student activist, told The Electronic Intifada. “We came to show our
opposition to the monstrous way that Israeli police kill Palestinians.”
On Wednesday night, dozens of Palestinian students and leftwing
activists assembled in front of Tel Aviv University for a candlelight
vigil. “We have every intention to continue our direct actions and
protests on campus throughout next week,” Eghbariya explained. “We want
to continue resisting this injustice until police violence stops once
and for all.”
“The police oppression hasn’t slowed down in recent years,” he said. “On the contrary, it has only increased.”
Although Israeli police claim that Mahash — a governmental body
tasked with examining claims of police misconduct — is investigating the
recent slayings in the Naqab, few have hope that it will deliver
justice for the victims’ families.
A
September 2014 report
on police violence published by Adalah concludes that “Mahash continues
to provide wide immunity to the police from being held to account, and
protects them from disciplinary measures for their brutal acts of
violence and repression,” including police slayings.
From the 11,282 complaints of police misconduct submitted between
2011 and 2013, Adalah found that Mahash closed 93 percent “with or
without an investigation.” More alarmingly still, only 3.3 percent led
to disciplinary action against police officers and a mere 2.7 percent
resulted in prosecution.
“This grants the police impunity for their actions, and is a factor
that shapes the police force’s use of violence against Israeli citizens,
particularly against Palestinian citizens,” the Adalah report adds.
Back in Jerusalem, student activist Majd Hamdan said protests would
continue as long as police treat Palestinian lives with contempt. “We
have to protest to show them that Arab blood is not cheap,” he said.
Patrick O. Strickland is an independent journalist and frequent
contributor to The Electronic Intifada. His reportage can be found at www.postrickland.com. Follow him on Twitter: @P_Strickland_
