Palæstinensiske aktivister tager “whites-only”-busser til Jerusalem, bliver anholdt

Hvad gør myndighederne i “Mellemøstens eneste demokrati”, når medlemmer af den forkerte etniske gruppe vil tage bosætternes busser fra Vestbredden til Jerusalem?

De slår ned, præcis som myndighederne i de amerikanske Sydstater gjorde i 60erne:

Six Palestinians seeking to emulate the “freedom rides” in the segregated southern United States of the 1960s by travelling in a West Bank-to-Jerusalem bus alongside Jewish settlers were arrested by Israeli police yesterday.

The Palestinian activists managed to board a number 148 bus outside the West Bank settlement of Psagot, near Ramallah, but the bus was halted and the activists taken off near the Hizma entry terminal to Jerusalem.

Three walked off the bus under police escort but another three, including one woman, Huwaida Arraf, resisted and were dragged off it by force amid shouts of “Stop the apartheid”, and “I have the right to go to Jerusalem”.

Police had earlier boarded the bus at the checkpoint to persuade the activists to leave of their own accord as supporters waved banners, including one – in an echo of the famous speech by civil rights activist Martin Luther King – proclaiming: “We have a dream.”

Two of the activists were told by a police officer: “You are detained. Please get off the bus. If not we will have to use force.” One of the Palestinians, Nadim Sharabati, a 33-year-old blacksmith from Hebron, told the officer: “This is racial discrimination between me and the settlers. Why don’t you take permits from the settlers when they come to us?”

When the police officer told the men: “I am asking in a civilised way, with respect,” the other man, Badiya Dweik, replied: “If you respected us you would treat us like [you treat] the settlers.” When the officer asked if he had a permit, Mr Dweik replied: “Why do you not ask the settlers for a permit?”

Another of the Palestinian activists, Fadi Quran from El Bireh adjacent to Ramallah, asked the officers, in an apparent reference to the settlers: “Why are you protecting the Klu Klux Klan?”

Link: Palestinians board settler’s bus