EJ Security Situation - Security Measures on the Ground

In keeping with the Netanyahu approach – which views East Jerusalem Palestinians as a security problem to be dealt with, rather than a constituent population to be engaged – enhanced law enforcement continues to be a key tool used by the Israeli authorities in East Jerusalem. This includes:

• Continued arrests of large numbers of Palestinians, including of minors as young as 7,  and even the use of Administrative Detention against Palestinian minors from East Jerusalem (involving no indictments and no due process, but lengthy and renewable incarceration).
• Israeli security raids of hospitals in East Jerusalem (see here, here, and here).
• Forceful searches of Palestinians at checkpoints by police (Video: Palestinian assaulted after refusing body search in Jerusalem)
• Continued roadblocks/checkpoints in many areas of East Jerusalem.
• A new ruling by the Jerusalem Municipality requiring mosques to turn their loudspeakers down and around, so as not to bother neighboring Jewish areas.
• The Knesset passed First Reading of New Anti-incitement Bill, which would make it much easier for Israeli authorities to arrest and prosecute Palestinians.
• Israel adopted a new law requiring a minimum sentence of three years in jail for stone throwers (in theory this would apply to Israeli stone throwers as well as Palestinians; in practice it is difficult to imagine that this will ever be the case). A Palestinian minor was the first person to be sentenced under the new law (almost guaranteeing that a hopeless angry youth will in a few years emerge from Israeli prison an angry, radicalized young adult).
• The Israeli government is seeking to ban altogether the import into Israel of airborne fireworks (which Palestinians have used as weapons in protests).
• The Jerusalem Municipality is urging Palestinian parents to prevent their children from having access to “dangerous objects such as knives.” (A plea that borders on the surreal given that presence of knives in every kitchen in every home anywhere in the world, and given that almost anything, including a ruler, can be fashioned into a knife).

At the same time Palestinians who work in West Jerusalem continue to face harassment and attacks on Palestinians from Israelis, and Price Tag attacks continue in East Jerusalem.