Israeli court blocks Sakhnin protest on main street, reinforces police’s political restrictions

On 9 January 2025, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled on a petition filed by Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel on behalf of Mohammad Barakeh, Chair of the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel; the Secretariat of the Committee of Arab Mayors in Israel; and Fadi Abu Younes, the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Israeli Communist Party. The petition challenged Israeli police restrictions that blocked a peaceful protest against the ongoing war on Gaza from being held. The event had been scheduled for 10 January, on the main street of Sakhnin, a Palestinian city in northern Israel. 

The proposed route has been used by Palestinians for protest demonstrations for many years, Most recently for a Land Day march held on 30 March 2024, during the ongoing war.

CLICK HERE to read the Court decision [in Hebrew]

CLICK HERE to read the petition [in Hebrew]

After the petitioners filed a request to the police for a permit to hold the protest, the police initially claimed that Israel’s state of war and the potential for the protest to involve “incitement” would  undermine the operations of Israeli soldiers in their war. Instead, the police suggested a number of remote, non-central locations where they would allow a stand-still protest of no more than 200 protesters to take place. In the petition, filed by Adalah Attorney Myssana Morany on 8 January, Adalah argued that the police’s motivations were clearly political and unlawful, meant to silence opposition to the war.

In their response to the Supreme Court petition, the police retracted their claims concerning incitement and instead argued that the protest could not proceed along the proposed route because they were unable to allocate the extensive resources and personnel they claim are required to maintain public order. This assessment was based on secret evidence presented to the Court ex parte during the hearing and a claim that closing the route would have “a high probability of presenting a risk to life”. Notably, at the same time each week major roads in Israel are frequently blocked by protesters, yet the police have not  claimed that such actions endanger lives or require resources beyond their capacity to allocate.

During the hearing, the Court sought to find an alternative route for the protests that the police and the petitioners could agree on. After discussing several proposed routes and reviewing the secret evidence, the Court made a final suggestion: the protest would proceed through neighbourhoods within Sakhnin, before concluding with a 45-minute gathering in front of the municipality. The police ultimately agreed to this route; however, the petitioners rejected it because it avoided the main street in Sakhnin entirely—even for a short section of the protest, which the petitioners had agreed to. The restriction of the protest to the neighborhoods and not the main road  would undermine the protest’s purpose of delivering a clear political message, and break with the longstanding tradition of holding demonstrations in the planned location.

Following the hearing, the Court issued its decision to “approve” the demonstration, but only along the heavily restricted proposed route. Despite the petitioners’ clear objections to this route, the Court did not address the substantive arguments they raised, and the demonstration was cancelled. 

In practice, this decision once again legitimizes the violation of the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel and imposes restrictions on their freedom of expression, under the guise of security concerns and the cynical exploitation of the wartime situation. When the matter reached the Court, the police’s argument about the content of the protest was replaced with security concerns that supposedly necessitate police resources that the authorities claim they lack. In effect, even a legitimate and non-violent protest will be assessed by the police as a security threat that cannot be permitted to go forward.

This case is part of a broader pattern of escalating and discriminatory restrictions on Palestinian protests in place since the outbreak of the war on 7 October 2023. The Supreme Court previously dismissed two earlier petitions filed to it by Adalah, in November and December 2023, based on similar police claims alleging the inability to allocate sufficient police resources due to the war. 

CLICK HERE to learn more about the 2023 petitions and HERE about the continued attacks on the right to protest.