By: Ori Nir
Why Is Israel at War With the Palestinian Flag?
The more things change, the more they stay the same. The Israeli obsession with the Palestinian flag is a good example.
Then, once the demonstrators took out a handful of tiny postcard-sized flags, the kind that you hold between your thumb and index finger, the police officers indeed went on to shove the demonstrators, beat them, then break and confiscate their flags. They even arrested one of the activists, on charges of waving the flag. A Jerusalem court later dismissed the charge, ruling that flying the Palestinian flag is not illegal.
In fact, the status of the Palestinian flag under Israeli law is still vague. And based on past experience, this issue is certain to reemerge.
No permit was ever issued, and young Palestinians used to sit in prison for months for waving their flag. The colors of the flag, however, were not outlawed, so Palestinians found creative ways to celebrate in public the black, white, green and red of their flag, such as through their clothing and as shop displays.
The practice became so iconic that years later, after the Palestinian Authority took control of West Bank towns, a large monument, a sculpture showing a Palestinian teen climbing a pole with the national flag, was strategically placed in downtown Ramallah, at Yasser Arafat Square.
The war against the symbol of the Palestinian national movement was waged not only in the occupied territories. In 1986, an Israeli Jew from Ramat Gan, a member of the Israeli Council for Israel-Palestine Peace, a small peace organization, was the target of a police investigation for wearing a tiny lapel pin on his shirt crossing the flags of the State of Israel and the Palestinian national movement.
The first intifada ended. Israel recognized the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and negotiated political accords with it, which were supposed to lead to Palestinian statehood.
Did the obsession with the Palestinian flag end? Not quite. While the Palestinian flag made its way to international institutions, even to the Knesset, it was still the cause for action against demonstrators, on both sides of the Green Line, and sometimes even for arrest.
In 2001, the Israeli civil rights organization Adalah asked the Attorney General’s office to clarify the policy. Adalah pointed out that in 1993, following the Oslo accords, then Chief of Police Raffi Peled wrote in a letter to the Knesset that, since the PLO was no longer considered a terrorist organization, waving its flag "is not illegal."
Indeed, through the mid and late 1990s, Israeli authorities hardly bothered with the flag. Two Attorneys General during that period determined that there was no public interest in pursuing flag-wavers.
But the PLO still appears in Israeli government official documents, even today, as a terrorist organization. Therefore, waving the PLO’s flag, as the Attorney General’s office opined in 2001, could be interpreted as identifying with a terrorist organization, which is a crime.
The test, according to the AG’s office then, was whether the flag-waver had "criminal intent," whether he or she "saw himself as identifying with the PLO as a terrorist organization."
The question of intent, the flag-waver’s intent, was the chief rationale that Jerusalem Police offered for taking action against flag-bearing demonstrators in recent months, referring to the intention to identify with terrorists or to incite violence. Can a law enforcement officer determine what a demonstrator’s intent is?
Today, in the Palestinian arena, Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Liberation Organization is the last to still endorse a compromise peace deal with Israel. Its agents in the West Bank cooperate with Israel’s security agencies to confront and thwart anti-Israel terrorism, actions which, seen as collaboration with the occupier, consistently diminish popular support for the institution and its leaders.
As Palestinians justifiably view it, the pursuit of the flag-wavers is an expression of Israel’s hostile attitude toward Palestinian nationalism. It’s an expression of the zero-sum attitude toward sovereignty and national rights in the land that lies between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean.
It is fuelled by the same exclusivist, uncompromising jingoistic spirit, which is driving Israel toward becoming a binational state that is neither politically democratic nor ethically Jewish.