NAZARETH, Monday, May 24, 2021 (WAFA) – Israeli police Monday overnight launched a wave of mass arrests against Palestinian citizens of Israel as part of violent crackdown on recent protests against Israel’s brutal settler-colonialism and apartheid regime.

Thousands of notorious Israeli border police officers and reserve brigades started a large-scale detention campaign to arrest over 500 young Palestinian citizens of Israel as part of what Israel dubbed as “Operation Law and Order” to “settle accounts” with the latter over their participation in protests against Israel’s colonial policies, including the forced displacements in Sheikh Jarrah, encroachments upon Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and settler mob violence.

As part of executing the campaign, the forces are carrying out violent arrests, kick into doors and brutalize and intimidate minors and families in the impoverished communities across Israel.

Director of the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Adalah), Hasan Jabarin, slammed the arrest campaign as a “declaration of war against Palestinian protestors, political activists and minors to take revenge against them for their recent political and national positions”.

While Israel has depicted the campaign as intended to restore order and deterrence against “rioters” and “criminals” involved in attacks against “Jews” over the past two weeks, Palestinian citizens of Israel have maintained that it intended to intimidate and discipline those who participated in the recent protests and crush their resilience and resistance to Israel’s apartheid and colonial regime and settler mob violence.

On the other hand, and while mobs of Israeli Jews were also involved in attacking homes and property of Palestinian Israelis throughout Israel, including the killing of one in the central Israeli mixed city of Lydda (Lod), none was arrested or charged with anything leaving the Palestinians to accuse the Israeli government of following an obvious policy of discrimination and apartheid. Even those accused of murdering the Palestinian in Lydda were set free few days later.

Over 1,550 Palestinian citizens of Israel have been arrested since May 9, including at least 200 people who will be charged, as part of the violent crackdown on protests in the Palestinian cities, towns and villages.

The arrests came a week after some 1.6 million Palestinian citizens of Israel participated in the general strike observed by the Palestinian people in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, Gaza and worldwide, heeding the call of the Arab High Follow-up Committee, which coordinates between political parties in Israel.

K.F.