In escalation against Palestinian citizens of Israel, government bans Islamic Movement of Northern Israel

On Monday, Israel’s security cabinet outlawed the Islamic Movement of Northern Israel, arrested a senior officer, and shut down 17 affiliated charities with police confiscating computers and hard files, amid claims the organization incited acts of violence against Israeli civilians and police over recent weeks.

“Any entity or person belonging to this organization henceforth, as well as any person who gives it service, or who acts on its behalf, will be committing a criminal offense and is subject to imprisonment. It will also be possible to seize all property belonging to the organization,” said a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.

The statement also alleged the Islamic group is both a “sister movement” of Hamas and a “branch of the Muslim Brotherhood,” two organizations listed as terror movements by Israel. 

Netanyahu added the Islamic movement dispatched paid operatives to rally crowds at the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem motivated “to subvert the state in order to establish an Islamic caliphate in its place.”

Critics of Netanyahu’s move say the Islamic Movement of Northern Israel’s claims regarding the al-Aqsa mosque are protected speech.

Head of the Joint Arab List, Ayman Odeh, asserted the banning was politically motivated and strategically timed after the Paris attacks on Friday to suggest a link between the Israel-based group and ISIS.

“Netanyahu is continuing in his attempts to exacerbate the situation on the ground and cause additional escalation by inciting against a political movement whose activities are all conducted under the right to free speech,” Odeh said, “The decision was made for strategic purposes, and its timing indicates that Netanyahu wishes to position the conflict as a religious conflict.”

The Islamic Movement of Israel

Founded in the 1970s, the Islamic Movement of Israel was a political party that called for the establishment of a Palestinian state with Islamic principles. From the outset, it was compared to the Muslim Brotherhood for its social, economic, and political platform. In 1996, the faction split in two—the Islamic Movement of Northern Israel and the Islamic Movement of Southern Israel. The latter group became a leading Arab party in Knesset, now in coalition with the Joint Arab List, Israel’s third-largest political faction.

After parting ways, the northern group continued on as a service organization, funding charities, schools—gender-segregated and coeducational—and local newspapers. It is headed by Sheikh Ra’ed Salah, the former mayor of Umm el-Fahm in central Israel, and the founder and head of the al-Aqsa Institution for Maintaining the Islamic Sacred Places, a charity that funds restoration projects inside of Jerusalem’s holy sites complex, and one of the relief societies ordered closed this morning.

Salah is regarded as an outspoken critic of Israel and has organized protests since the late 1990s against Israeli extremists entering the Noble Sanctuary, Jerusalem’s religious complex that encloses the Dome of the Rock, the al-Aqsa mosque, and the site of two destroyed biblical temples. He was jailed from 2003 to 2005 for operating charities in the West Bank that were allegedly affiliated with Hamas.

In 2013, Salah again faced legal sanction for “incitement” on charges of claiming Israel was altering the status quo of the Noble Sanctuary. He is due to begin an 11-month sentence in the coming days.

Still Salah is somewhat of a peripheral figure in the landscape of Palestinian leaders. When he called for marches against Israeli forces entering the Noble Sanctuary last month, he attracted dozens to his march. At the same time both regional branches of Fatah and Hamas, and unaffiliated student councils, have amassed hundreds to repeatedly protest the Israeli military in demonstrations in the West Bank.

In yesterday’s announcement, Israel’s security cabinet said indictments were issued for Salah and an unknown number of other leaders in the Islamic Movement of Northern Israel. In a background briefing released to the media, Israel identified five other directors of the group as alleged agitators. The local news site Yaffa 48–an affiliate of the Islamic Movement–reported that Israeli police arrested the group’s Director of External Relations, Dr. Joseph Awawdeh, from his home in the Galilee. 

Responding on Facebook, the Jerusalem Post reported Salah posted, “Oh Muslims, Oh Arabs, Oh Palestinians everywhere, we will remain as we were, the protectors of Jerusalem and blessed al-Aqsa Mosque until we meet Allah.”

New Israeli strategy towards protests

The banning indicates a shift in approach for Netanyahu who previously sought to quell tensions that began in October through increased policing. Last month, he deployed reservists across Jerusalem and Israel and erected 14 new checkpoints inside Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. Yet the violence is continuing with near-daily killings of Palestinians and attacks on Israelis. Netanyahu’s latest strategy is to criminalize those who charge Israel with attempting to alter the tenuous status quo over Jerusalem’s holy sites.

Protests have mounted for months near the al-Aqsa mosque where Palestinians say Israel has breached the 1967 agreement for Jordanian stewardship over the religious sites. The Israeli government refutes this, yet Palestinians cite 10,000 annual Jewish visitors to the locations, an increase from just 200 five years ago, as a creeping violation of the accord.

Over the past six weeks, Palestinians have killed 15 Israelis in attacks, and Israeli forces and civilians have killed more than 110 Palestinians. More than half of those killed were shot in demonstrations across the West Bank and Gaza, in support of Palestinian protests.

“For years, the northern branch of the Islamic Movement has led a mendacious campaign of incitement under the heading ‘Al Aqsa is in danger’ that falsely accuses Israel of intending to harm the Al Aqsa Mosque and violate the status quo,” Netanyahu said. “A significant portion of recent terrorist attacks have been committed against the background of this incitement and propaganda.”