Former MK detained for alleged incitement during 2022 Ramallah speech

The Israel Police briefly arrested and interrogated former MK Mohammad Barakeh on Tuesday for suspected incitement during a speech he made more than three years ago in Ramallah.

Announcing the move, the police said that they arrested a former elected official for giving a speech in December 2022, which allegedly expressed “praise for and identification with terrorists and terror groups, alongside calls for struggle against the State of Israel.

The arrest came several days after police initially summoned Barakeh for questioning in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, following approval from the State Attorney’s Office last week to launch an investigation.

Barakeh, the former leader of the Arab-majority Hadash party, refused to travel to the settlement, prompting police to instead turn up on his doorstep in Shfaram with a warrant. They placed him under arrest and brought him to the West Bank for questioning.

After his interrogation, Barakeh was brought to the Petah Tikva Magistrate’s Court, where police sought to bar him from leaving the country until October or entering the West Bank for a 90-day period.

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The judge rejected the police’s request to bar him from traveling abroad, but imposed a 30-day ban on him entering the West Bank.

Police did not elaborate on the statements Barakeh made during his speech. According to Hebrew reports, the former lawmaker compared the State of Israel to Nazi Germany, called for “popular resistance to the occupation,” and “struggle and fighting” against Israel.

The speech in question was delivered at a 2022 rally marking the anniversary of the founding of Fatah, the dominant Palestinian political party in the West Bank.

At the time of the speech, Barakeh was chairman of the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, an umbrella organization representing Israel’s Arab citizens.

The organization decried the former chairman’s arrest on Tuesday evening as politically motivated, claiming it represented “another dangerous episode in a string of political persecutions” meant to “intimidate the Arab populace, deter them from political participation and legitimate struggle against the policies of occupation, racism, and political repression.”

Barakeh, who served as an MK from 1999 until 2015, has been arrested or faced charges several times in the past, most recently in November 2023, along with three other prominent Arab Israeli leaders, for planning an anti-war protest that police claimed could incite violence and threaten public order.

In 2015, a court overturned a conviction of the former Hadash leader for assaulting a right-wing activist at a protest against the Second Lebanon War in 2006.Barakeh punched a right-wing activist on the sidelines of an anti-war protest in Tel Aviv, saying he did so in defense of a left-wing activist who claimed he was being threatened.

The court also tossed out charges against Barakeh in 2011 for insulting a public servant and interfering with a police officer in the line of duty.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.