Over 10,000 attend anti-war protest in northern Arab town under heavy police presence

Over 10,000 people protest against the war in Gaza in the northern Arab town of Sakhnin, Haaretz reports.

Footage posted to social media shows a heavy police presence, but no arrests are reported. The demonstration comes a day after 24 people were arrested at an anti-war protest in Haifa.

Sakhnin mayor Mazen Ghanaim says in a speech at the protest that, “We and our people in Gaza are one nation. We demand full equality and civil rights, not more war.”

Former lawmaker Mohammad Barakeh, who heads the High Follow-up Committee, an Arab community umbrella organization, says the demonstration is “here to send a clear message against genocide, ethnic cleansing and starvation.”

He assails the police build-up at the protest as seeking to intimidate protesters.

“Why would police deploy so many officers for a normal demonstration?” he asks. “You won’t intimidate us.”

Tens of thousands, Palestinians and Jews, marched together in Sakhnin against the war of annihilation and the deliberate starvation.

For an end to the war, for an end to the occupation and the achievement of peace, for the sake of life. pic.twitter.com/QH6yuIglFk

— איימן עודה أيمن عودة Ayman Odeh (@AyOdeh) July 25, 2025

He says the mob that attacked Arab lawmaker Ayman Odeh en route to an anti-war rally in Ness Ziona on Saturday “is, more than anything, similar to the Nazis and to white supremacist groups in the United States,” and accuses the government of “cultivating these mobs.”

On the heels of France’s decision to recognize Palestinian statehood, Barakeh also says: “We demand that the State of Palestine be declared a sovereign state under occupation.”

Arabic-language website Arab48 reports that dozens of people also attended smaller anti-war rallies in the central towns of Jaffa and Tira and the northern town of Kabul.