Meretz
MK, Joint List leader says move would create ‘apartheid’; Sanders sends
video message; police forcefully detain photojournalist covering event,
arrest 4 demonstrators
By JACOB MAGID
Times of Israel 6 June 2020,
Thousands
of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv Saturday evening to protest Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledge to begin annexing parts of the West
Bank next month.Police initially sought to block the rally but
backtracked Friday after meeting with organizers, who urged participants
to wear masks and adhere to social distancing guidelines.Dozens of
officers were securing the demonstration after police said attendance
would be capped at 2,000, though the Haaretz daily put turnout at 6,000
people in what appeared to be the largest protest in the country since
the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
The
demonstration was organized by the left-wing Meretz party and the
Communist Hadash faction of the majority-Arab Joint List, along with
several other left-wing rights groups.MK Nitzan Horowitz, the head of
Meretz, told the crowd that annexation would be a “war crime” and would
cost Israel millions as the economy is already reeling due to the
pandemic.“We cannot replace an occupation of dozens of years with an
apartheid that will last forever,” shouted a hoarse Horowitz. “Yes to
two states for two peoples, no to violence and bloodshed,” he continued.
“No to annexation, yes to peace.” Horowitz said “annexation is a war
crime, a crime against peace, a crime against humanity, a crime that
will result in bloodshed.”He called out Defense Minister Benny Gantz,
Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi and Economy Minister Amir Peretz,
accusing them of “raising their hands and crawling to the other side.”
The
three center-left lawmakers had pledged not to sit in a government with
Netanyahu, citing the premier’s indictment on graft charges, but after
Israel’s third inconclusive election in March agreed to join him in a
coalition.The coalition deal signed between Netanyahu’s Likud party and
Gantz’s Blue and White allows the prime minister to begin moving forward
with annexation on July 1. The parts of the West Bank that Israel will
extend sovereignty over are those earmarked for it under US President
Donald Trump’s peace plan.
“You
have no mandate to approve this apartheid. You have no mandate to bury
peace,” Horowitz yelled. The Meretz head claimed Netanyahu was being
pushed to carry out the controversial move by the “messianic” Trump
administration.“Make some noise so no one thinks that we’re a bunch of
nerds,” the emcee shouted at the crowd after Horowitz’s speech.
)Fellow
Meretz MK Tamar Zandberg savaged Trump’s peace plan as “a cursed deal
between one man who’s trying to win an election and another who’s trying
to escape a corruption trial,” referring respectively to the US
president and Netanyahu.“Trump is not a friend of Israel. Bibi
[Netanyahu] is not good for Israel,” she said, ironically echoing
settler leaders who oppose the US plan due to its backing for a
Palestinian state. “This [peace] deal has nothing to do with what is
good for us, Israelis and Palestinians who live here in the Middle
East.”She said the agreement would “officially make Israel an apartheid
state… [Enacting] sovereignty [in the West Bank] without [granting]
citizenship [to Palestinians] is apartheid,” she asserted.
Also
addressing the rally was Joint List leader Ayman Odeh, who spoke from
quarantine by video link after a member of his party contracted
COVID-19. Odeh said all Jews and Arabs who support peace and justice
must oppose Netanyahu’s plan to enact Israeli sovereignty over some 30
percent of the West Bank.“Annexation is apartheid,” Odeh told the
cheering protesters.Odeh compared the protest against annexation to the
Four Mothers protest movement in the late 1990s, which pressed the
government to withdraw Israeli troops from southern Lebanon.
Labor
MK Merav Michaeli, who opposed her party’s decision to join the new
government, told protesters she came to Rabin Square as a representative
of those in her center-left faction who oppose annexation.Michaeli said
the move will damage relations with Jordan, which along with Egypt is
the only Arab country to have full ties with Israel, as well as with
close trade partners in Europe.She also bashed Gantz for agreeing to
join a government that would carry out such a move.
Vermont
senator and former Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders addressed the
rally in a video message from the US.“I’m extremely heartened to see so
many of you, Arabs and Jews alike, standing up for peace, justice and
democracy,” the self-described Democratic socialist said.He added: “The
plans to annex any parts of the West Bank must be stopped. The
occupation must be ended and we must work together for a future of
equality and dignity for all people in Israel and Palestine.”
Some
of the protesters waved Israeli, Palestinian and Communist flags, with
several dozen holding up pictures of Iyad Halak, a Palestinian man with
autism who was shot dead by police last week in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Police said they believed Halak had a gun; he was unarmed and holding a
cellphone, and apparently did not understand the officers’ orders to
stop.Ripping a page from protests in the US, Peace Now CEO Shaqued Morag
told demonstrators to take a knee “in memory of George Floyd. In memory
of Iyad Halak. In memory of all the victims of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.”After the protest ended, police cleared a group of protesters
who illegally blocked Ibn Gabirol street, a main thoroughfare in the
city that runs by Rabin Square.
Police
said five protesters were detained, including a photographer from the
Haaretz daily who was covering the protest.A reporter at the newspaper
tweeted that the photographer identified himself as a journalist, but
was forcefully apprehended by officers.
Ahead
of the rally, Knesset opposition leader Yair Lapid dismissed
Netanyahu’s annexation vow as “spin” meant to distract the public’s
attention from his ongoing corruption trial and the pandemic-induced
economic crisis.“I think it’s spin by Netanyahu, who is trying to
deflect attention from economic meltdown, including the collapse of
independent businesses, and his criminal trial,” he told Channel 12 news
in an interview.“I support the Trump plan. I oppose unilateral
annexation,” Lapid added.
Saturday’s
rally came amid a wave of regional and international criticism of the
planned Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank under the peace
plan being advanced by the Trump administration in the US.Much of the
International community has already expressed strong opposition to the
move, and the US has also recently intimated that it wants Israel to
slow down.
Palestinians
are vocal in their opposition to Trump’s plan, which gives Israel the
green light to annex Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley, in what
is intended to be part of a negotiated process but may go ahead
unilaterally.
- 20, to denounce Israel's plan to annex parts of the West Bank. (JACK GUEZ / AFP)
Thousands attend a protest against Israel’s plan to annex parts of the West Bank, at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv on June 6, 2020. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90
Israelis attend a protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to annex parts of the West Bank, at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, June 6, 2020. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)
A protester carries the Israeli flag during a protest in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square on June 6, 2020, to denounce Israel's plan to annex parts of the West Bank. (JACK GUEZ / AFP)
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