Analysis

Palestinian police arrest anti-Israel activists

Four detainees disrupted a Ramallah concert in a campaign against normalizing ties with Israel

By Avi Issacharoff
  • Avi Issacharoff, The Times of Israel's Middle East analyst, fills the same role for Walla, the leading portal in Israel. He is also a guest commentator on many different radio shows and current affairs programs on television. Until 2012, he was a reporter and commentator on Arab affairs for the Haaretz newspaper. He also lectures on modern Palestinian history at Tel Aviv University, and is currently writing a script for an action-drama series for the Israeli satellite Television "YES." Born in Jerusalem, he graduated cum laude from Ben Gurion University with a B.A. in Middle Eastern studies and then earned his M.A. from Tel Aviv University on the same subject, also cum laude. A fluent Arabic speaker, Avi was the Middle East Affairs correspondent for Israeli Public Radio covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the war in Iraq and the Arab countries between the years 2003-2006. Avi directed and edited short documentary films on Israeli television programs dealing with the Middle East. In 2002 he won the "best reporter" award for the "Israel Radio” for his coverage of the second intifada. In 2004, together with Amos Harel, he wrote "The Seventh War - How we won and why we lost the war with the Palestinians." A year later the book won an award from the Institute for Strategic Studies for containing the best research on security affairs in Israel. In 2008, Issacharoff and Harel published their second book, entitled "34 Days - The Story of the Second Lebanon War," which won the same prize.
 13 April 2014, 4:56 pm

Palestinian police arrested four men on Saturday night in a crackdown on activists aiming to disrupt the normalization of ties with Israel, in what was the apparently the first such action taken by Palestinian Authority security forces.

The four detainees, all residents of Ramallah, along with a group of others, attempted to disrupt a concert in the city given by a traveling Indian band. The apparent reason for their opposition to the performance was that the band had previously performed in Israel.

The arrests drew much criticism from commentators on social network sites.

The activists had previously engaged in other acts against normalization of ties. In January a group of Israeli peace activists who came to Ramallah to take part in talks with their Palestinian counterparts were forced to leave the city in the face of aggressive protests from the anti-Israel campaigners.

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