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‘A battle of Jews against Jews’? Arab Israelis debate whether and how to join Israel’s democracy protests
TAYIBE, Israel (JTA) — Prominent figures among Israel’s Arab minority are calling on its members to join the mass protests against the Netanyahu government’s judicial overhaul plan, arguing that Arabs will be the first victims of any weakening of the Supreme Court.
“If the government succeeds it will make our chances for equality and a just peace more remote,” said Suheil Diab, former deputy mayor of Nazareth, Israel’s largest Arab city, and one of the organizers of a nonpartisan push to get Arabs to demonstrate alongside their Jewish counterparts.
“If we don’t repel the attack on the judiciary, we can’t go forward with our agenda,” Diab went on. “I want Arabs to participate and to know that participating is in their interest.”
The proposed reforms would give the Knesset — now controlled by a right-wing coalition — the power to override Israel’s Supreme Court, in a move that proponents say is needed because, in their view, the court has grown too liberal and out of step with popular sentiment. Leaders of some of the parties in the coalition have called for curbing rights of LGBTQ Israelis, non-Orthodox Jews and Arab Israelis. At least one of them has openly suggested that Arab citizens who are “disloyal” should be deported.
Diab and other Arab leaders fear that without the protection of the Supreme Court, the Arab minority might face measures limiting funding, access to jobs and opportunities and even their political representation. Even expulsion feels like a realistic concern given the far-right influence in the government, he said.
”We need to convince a distinct share of the Jewish majority that both of us are threatened,” Diab told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “The only way is a shared Jewish-Arab struggle.”
But while massive protests including tech entrepreneurs, army reservists, academics and others have shown the extent of determination among Jews to stop the government’s bid to legislate what it terms “judicial reform,” Arab Israelis, who make up one-fifth of the population, have hardly turned out.
This dynamic has been true in the Knesset as well as in the streets. Mansour Abbas, the leader of the Arab Ra’am Party, has said he opposes the changes, but when he was invited to participate in a press conference with other leaders of the political opposition, he declined.
Palestinian flags were seen at some of the early pro-democracy protests in Israel, such as at this one in Tel Aviv Jan. 14, 2023, but have appeared less frequently since. (Gili Yaari/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
A push to get Arabs to participate in the protests began Friday with publication of a petition calling for public activism, inked by more than 200 Arab personalities, including retired judges. A gathering here on Saturday sought to work through thorny questions about what Arab participation might look like, and what demands it might make.
Getting Israeli Arabs to the protests that have become a recurring feature of life in cities across Israel every Saturday night won’t necessarily be easy. The push is likely to run up against perceived disenfranchisement on the part of Arab Israelis, whose political parties have rarely been part of governing coalitions and whose participation in electoral politics has been portrayed in the past as illegitimate by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies.
Another likely obstacle is a narrow focus for the protest organizers, almost all Jewish.
In the first weeks of the protests in January, Palestinian flags raised by protesters drew criticism from right-wing and pro-government pundits. National Security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called for a ban on the flag in public and warned that those waving Palestinian flags in future demonstrations would be arrested. Fewer Palestinian flags were seen in the following weeks, and issues relating to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank or to the new government’s attitude toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were all but dropped from the agenda. An Israeli activist who asked to carry a Palestinian flag while speaking was declined.
The organizers do not seem interested thus far in broadening the agenda, and only a few Arab speakers have been featured in the demonstrations. Just hours after the Tayibe meeting on Saturday, Reem Hazzan, a leader of the predominantly Arab Hadash party in Haifa, was told by organizers who reviewed a copy of her planned speech to make changes to it. She refused and there was no Arab speaker.
Haaretz quoted unidentified organizers as saying the problem was that Hazzan refused to call in her speech for the Arab public to turn out for the protests. But Hazzan, in remarks to JTA, said she sees a deeper problem.
“We want to change the rules of the game, not just preserve what exists. What exists is not good,” she said. “We need to speak about the occupation and about discrimination. If you want Arabs to participate you must take into account that Arabs have an agenda.”
Exactly what that agenda should be was under debate during the gathering in Tayibe, a sprawling town in central Israel that like many Arab municipalities suffers from spiraling crime and violence.
“People say it’s a battle of Jews against Jews; others say they don’t want us there so why should we go and others point to times when the court sided against us,” said Mohammed Ali Taha, 82, former head of the Arab Writers Association, who spoke at the Tayibe gathering.
Arab Israelis cast their vote at a voting station in Tayibe, Nov. 1, 2022. (Jamal Awad/Flash90)
“It’s all true,” he continued. “But still we must join the protests because we will be the primary losers. When the far right rises, it strikes against the weak. We are the weak.”
With no constitution, Israel lacks any explicit guarantee of equality for all its citizens. Some laws, including those ensuring the right for immigration, advantage Jews. To the extent that Arabs have been able to challenge discrimination in recent decades, it has been largely through the Supreme Court inferring equality on them based on liberal legislation such as the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom, passed in 1992, which specifies, “Every human being is entitled to protection of his life, body and dignity.” Critics of the proposed reforms warn that they could result in the rollback of that basic law.
The court has also at times ruled against Arab Israeli interests, such as when it refused to consider petitions against the 2018 Nation State Law, which enshrines Jewish settlement as a national value, declares that national self-determination in the state of Israel is “unique to the Jewish people” and demotes Arabic from an official language.
Tayibe’s deputy mayor, Malik Azzem, said that despite its mixed record, an independent Supreme Court is essential for Israeli Arabs.
“The High Court is our last defense for our rights as a minority,” he said. “The struggle for our rights is not separate from this struggle. We need to mobilize the public.”
He added that as an elected official, he fears that without the court’s oversight, the government would simply cut the budgets of Arab municipalities.
”People need to raise their voices and join,” Azzem said. “We should be at the center of the demonstrations. We are already late in dealing with this.”
Taha, the writer, whose works often focus on the Nakba, an Arabic term meaning catastrophe that is used to describe the plight of Palestinians after Israel’s 1948 War of Independence and which he lived through as a child, told the gathering: ”Without Jewish-Arab cooperation we cannot achieve anything. This is an opportunity for cooperation.”
He said he believes Arab Israelis are today more vulnerable than they have been at any time since the period that they lived under military rule, from 1948 to 1966. At that time they were so restricted that they could not travel within Israel without permits. The danger today, he says, is due to the clout of far-right ministers Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who have expressed anti-Arab views and, in Ben-Gvir’s case, even called for the expulsion of “disloyal” citizens.
“If they succeed it will be worse for us than military rule was,” Taha said. To avert this, he argued, Arabs need to join the protests alongside Jews even if it means not raising Palestinian flags.
”It’s not the time and place for a protest about a Palestinian state,” he said. “This could cause conflict among the protesters.”
But to others, the idea of protesting without highlighting the need to end both the occupation and inequality is akin to denying one’s very identity.
“I’m against participating in any demonstration that is embarrassed to talk about context and the occupation. I support something broader,” said Sondos Saleh, a former member of Knesset for the Arab Ta’al party.
Sondos Saleh, an Arab Israeli politician then on the Joint List Party candidate list, speaks during a press conference in Tel Aviv, Feb. 23, 2021. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)
Merav Ben-Ari, a legislator for the largest opposition party, Yesh Atid, told JTA she would welcome greater Arab participation in the protests. ”Anything that strengthens the protests is excellent,” she said.
But she showed little enthusiasm for talking about many of the topics that animate Israeli Arabs in the political sphere, including the core one that liberal critics of the protest movement say is being given short shrift.
“How is the occupation connected?” Ben-Ari asked. “What is needed is to talk about the reform. Everyone who loves the country and cares about it has to fight against the reform and the harm to the Supreme Court.”
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Hamas Tightens Grip in Gaza as Trump Pushes Peace Plan
A Hamas Police officer directs traffic in Gaza City, Jan. 28, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
Hamas is cementing its hold over Gaza by placing loyalists in key government roles, collecting taxes, and paying salaries, according to an Israeli military assessment seen by Reuters and sources in the Palestinian enclave.
Hamas’s continuing influence over key Gaza power structures has fueled widespread skepticism about the prospects of US President Donald Trump’s peace plan, which requires the terrorist group to give up its weapons in exchange for an Israeli military withdrawal from the territory.
Trump‘s international Board of Peace, which is meant to supervise Gaza‘s transitional governance, held its inaugural meeting in Washington on Thursday.
“Hamas is advancing steps on the ground meant to preserve its influence and grip in the Gaza Strip ‘from the bottom up’ by means of integrating its supporters in government offices, security apparatuses, and local authorities,” the military said in a document presented to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in late January.
Hamas says it is ready to hand over administration of the enclave to a US-backed committee of Palestinian technocrats headed by Ali Shaath, a former Palestinian Authority official in the West Bank. But it says Israel has not yet allowed committee members to enter Gaza to assume their responsibilities.
Netanyahu did not respond to Reuters’ questions about Hamas‘s control over Gaza. An Israeli government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, dismissed any notion of a future role for the group as “twisted fantasy,” saying, “Hamas is finished as a governing authority in the Gaza Strip.”
The Israeli military declined to comment on Hamas‘s assertions.
Israeli military officials say Hamas, which refuses to disarm, has been taking advantage of an October ceasefire to reassert control in areas vacated by Israeli troops. Israel still holds over half of Gaza, but nearly all its 2 million people are in Hamas-held areas.
Reuters could not determine the full scope of Hamas‘s appointments and attempts to replenish its coffers.
NEW GOVERNORS
Hamas has named five district governors, all of them with links to its armed al-Qassam Brigades, according to two Palestinian sources with direct knowledge of its operations. It has also replaced senior officials in Gaza‘s economy and interior ministries, which manage taxation and security, the sources said.
And a new deputy health minister was shown touring Gaza hospitals in a ministry video released this month.
“Shaath may have the key to the car, and he may even be allowed to drive, but it is a Hamas car,” one of the sources told Reuters.
Israel’s military appears to have reached a similar conclusion.
“Looking ahead, without Hamas disarmament and under the auspices of the technocrat committee, Hamas will succeed, in our view, to preserve influence and control in the Gaza Strip,” it said in its assessment, which was first reported by Israel’s Channel 13 news. This is the most complete account of the document’s contents.
Ismail al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-controlled government’s media office, denied these were new appointments, saying temporary replacements had been found for posts left vacant during the war to “prevent any administrative vacuum” and ensure residents receive vital services while negotiations continue over next steps in the peace process.
The US State Department and Shaath’s National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A source close to the 15-member NCAG said it was aware of Hamas‘s actions and was not happy about them.
On Saturday, the committee issued a statement urging international mediators to step up efforts to resolve outstanding issues, saying it would not be able to carry out its responsibilities “without the full administrative, civilian, and police powers necessary to implement its mandate effectively.”
TRUMP‘S BOARD OF PEACE HOLDS FIRST MEETING
The appointment of Shaath’s committee in January marked the start of the next phase of Trump‘s plan to end the war in Gaza, even as key elements of the first phase – including a complete cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hamas – remain unfulfilled.
The Board of Peace is expected to receive reports on the committee’s work on Thursday.
Trump is also expected to announce countries that will commit personnel for a UN-authorized stabilization force and help train a new Palestinian police force, which the NCAG is expected to manage.
Hamas is looking to incorporate 10,000 of its police officers in the new force, Reuters reported in January. They include hundreds of members of its powerful internal security service, which has merged with the police, two sources in Gaza said.
Hamas‘s Thawabta dismissed the reports of a merger between the two forces as “entirely unfounded,” saying, “There has been no change whatsoever in their work or the scope of responsibilities of either one.”
Asked whether Israel would raise concerns about Hamas‘s entrenchment in Gaza at Thursday’s meeting, Netanyahu’s office did not comment.
Israel has said repeatedly it opposes any role for Hamas in Gaza after it attacked southern Israel in October 2023, killing more than 1,200 people and kidnapping 251 hostages. Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in Gaza.
The group seized control of the territory in a brief civil war with its political rival, Fatah, in 2007. Since then, appointments to government ministries and municipal offices there have been decided by Hamas‘s political wing. It also set up its own civil service, which employs tens of thousands of people.
At least 14 of Gaza‘s 17 ministries are now operating, compared with five at the height of the war, according to the Israeli military document. At least 13 of its 25 municipalities have also resumed operations, it says.
Thawabta said “this relative recovery” was not a product of “political considerations.”
“The organizational measures taken during the past period were necessary to prevent the collapse of the service system and do not conflict with any future arrangements agreed upon,” he said in a statement to Reuters.
According to the two sources, Hamas appointed the five governors along with four mayors to replace people killed or dismissed during the war. The selection of people with ties to its armed wing for the governors’ roles was to crack down on armed gangs, they said, adding some had received weapons and financing from Israel.
Netanyahu acknowledged Israeli backing for anti-Hamas clans in June, though Israel has provided few details.
TAXES ON SMUGGLED CIGARETTES, PHONES
Since a violent campaign against its opponents in the first weeks of the truce, Hamas has focused on maintaining public order and collecting taxes in its side of the “yellow line” agreed to demarcate Israeli- and Hamas-controlled areas, according to Israeli military officials and Gaza sources.
“There is no opposition to Hamas within the yellow line now, and it is taking over all economic aspects of daily life,” an Israeli military official told Reuters.
Mustafa Ibrahim, a political commentator in Gaza, said looting and robbery had stopped.
“Hamas is trying to organize markets and streets through the traffic police,” Ibrahim said. “Police stations have reopened … The tax department and economy ministry are working and collecting.”
Hamas collects taxes mainly from the private sector, the Israeli military document says. They include fees levied on Gaza merchants bringing in smuggled goods, such as cigarettes, batteries, solar panels, and mobile phones, according to three other sources, including a merchant.
Hamas has earned hundreds of millions of shekels by taxing smuggled cigarettes since the war began, according to an Israeli indictment filed this month against a suspected smuggling ring, which includes Israeli reservists serving in Gaza.
Hamas has also continued to pay salaries to public servants and fighters, which average around 1,500 shekels (around $500) a month, according to at least four Hamas sources.
“Every moment of delay in allowing the technocratic committee to enter the Gaza Strip leads to the imposition of a de facto reality,” said Reham Owda, a Palestinian political analyst, “increasing the administrative and security control of the Hamas government in Gaza.”
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Trump Presses Iran to Make ‘Meaningful’ Deal, Appears to Set 10-Day Deadline
An Iranian newspaper with a cover photo of an Iranian missile, in Tehran, Iran, Feb. 19, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
US President Donald Trump warned Iran on Thursday that it must reach a deal over its nuclear program or “bad things” will happen, and appeared to set a 10–day deadline before the US might take action.
Amid a massive US military buildup in the Middle East that has fueled fears of a wider war, Trump said negotiations with Iran were going well but insisted Tehran has to reach a “meaningful” agreement.
“Otherwise bad things happen,” Trump, who has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran, told the first meeting of his Board of Peace in Washington.
Trump spoke of the US airstrikes carried out in June, saying Iran‘s nuclear potential had been “decimated,” adding “we may have to take it a step further or we may not.”
“You’ll be finding out over the next probably 10 days,” he said, without elaborating.
‘GOOD TALKS’: TRUMP
US threats to bomb Iran, with the two sides far apart in talks on Tehran’s nuclear program, have pushed up oil prices, and a Russian corvette warship on Thursday joined planned Iranian naval drills in the Gulf of Oman, a vital sea route for global energy.
Iranian and US negotiators met on Tuesday and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said they had agreed on “guiding principles.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday, however, that the two sides remained apart on some issues.
Trump said “good talks are being had,” and a senior US official said Iran would make a written proposal on how to address US concerns.
Trump called on Tehran to join the US on the “path to peace.”
“They can’t have a nuclear weapon, it’s very simple,” he said. “You can’t have peace in the Middle East if they have a nuclear weapon.”
Iran has resisted making major concessions on its nuclear program, though insisting it is for peaceful purposes. The US and Israel in the past have accused Tehran of trying to develop a nuclear bomb.
Earlier on Thursday, Russia warned against an “unprecedented escalation of tension” around Iran on Thursday and urged restraint amid the US military buildup in the region, which a senior American official said should be complete by mid-March.
THREAT OF WAR
Trump has sent aircraft carriers, warships, and jets to the region, raising the prospect of another attack on the Islamic Republic.
The United States and Israel bombed Iran‘s nuclear facilities and some military sites last June. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss Iran on Feb. 28, the senior US official said.
Washington wants Iran to entirely give up uranium enrichment, a process used to create fuel for atomic power plants but that can also provide material for a warhead.
The US and ally Israel also want Iran to give up long-range ballistic missiles, stop supporting terrorist groups around the Middle East, and stop using force to quell internal protests.
Iran says it refuses to discuss issues beyond the atomic file, calling efforts to limit its missile arsenal a red line.
Satellite pictures have tracked both Iranian work to repair and fortify sites since last summer, showing work at both nuclear and missile sites, as well as preparations at US bases across the Middle East over the past month.
Iran‘s joint exercise with Russia came days into an extended series of Iranian naval drills in the Gulf of Oman, with Iranian state television showing special forces units deployed on helicopters and ships.
In a sign of growing concern over the increased tensions, Poland on Thursday became the latest European country to urge its citizens to leave Iran, with Prime Minister Donald Tusk saying Poles may only have hours to evacuate.
Trump began threatening strikes on Iran again in January as Iranian authorities crushed widespread protests with deadly violence that left thousands dead across the country.
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Confronting art and love as the Nazis close in
The New York theater world has been enriched in recent years by small companies of artists who are Russian-born and work from a Russian sensibility, though often in the English language.
In an interview, Roman Freud, a playwright, actor, and co-founder of the Five Evenings Company, pointed out that many of the Russian theater artists now in New York, including himself, are Jewish, which cannot help but color some of their presentations.
In Freud’s newest play Beneath the Ice of the Vistula, the plot is simple but arresting. It’s Warsaw, 1939. Jewish composer Adam (played on alternate nights by Freud himself) is holed up in his apartment, demanding total solitude so he can concentrate on finishing his master work for cello.
As the Nazis’ round-up of Jews accelerates right outside his window, he develops a loving relationship with his Polish cook Lydia (played with total conviction and charm by Cady McClain), who begs him to escape to her Polish village. Their scenes together are wholly believable. Suspense builds. Will he complete his composition and thus have the will to escape? Will they make a life together? Looking back from 2026, we know the terrible odds against them.
But while the cook, who is also an artist (albeit in the kitchen), is aware of danger and anchors the story in real-world Polish history, and as their relationship becomes sweeter and yet more intense, Adam turns increasingly inward. We see this in scenes of his fantasies, memories and dreams, which pop up as Russian-inflected vaudeville moments.
Suddenly, for example, the living room furniture is transformed into a shower, and Adam joins Lydia under “water” made of cellophane. The sound of Lydia’s clashing saucepans drowns out dark passages of his solo cello. The impressionist composer Maurice Ravel, whom Adam reveres, appears in a rowboat, glowering in a string-mop wig. Occasionally, such drastic shifts between the realistic and the absurd seem confusing on the stage and could use a more secure overall vision of the whole as well as some smoother transitions.
However, the concept is strong. While Lydia sees Warsaw without illusion, Adam’s mad, even suicidal, determination seems titanic but lunatic. In this way, Freud presents us with two ways of experiencing life, utilizing two theatrical techniques — the Realistic and the Absurdist. This deeply serious plot flirts with an absurdist way of looking at life. To sensible people like the Polish cook, Adam’s nonsensical determination is indeed absurd. Although, to be fair, rounding up Jews is an absurd obsession as well.
Roman Freud said the theme of his play is the nature of art: the artist as an ordinary “regular” person who nevertheless is a vessel for creative purpose. Adam is noble in his way. But the audience can’t help but ask: Is his music actually great art? The sonorous notes of his cello (playing a composition composed and performed especially for this production), rising above Lydia’s clashing pots and pans, have a powerful effect. Yet it’s difficult to believe in his higher calling as purely as he believes in it himself, and sometimes, I’m afraid, especially at the end, it’s hard to sympathize with him as much as we should. You might even ask: Is even great art worth dying for?
Jews and Jewishness are not Freud’s only subjects. He’s written a play about Napoleon, for example, but he says it’s “natural” that Jewishness is important to him, and in fact considers this play a tribute to his family and to the Jewish culture silenced in the Holocaust.
The Nazis outside the window and Adam’s Jewish upbringing are basic to the play. He is bitterly angry at his family and community for forcing him to choose between them and the music he loves. A passage from the Song of Songs chanted offstage in traditional mode as Adam crouches under a twisted prayer shawl seems meant to evoke his ambivalence about his heritage.
It’s interesting to compare Beneath the Ice of the Vistula with Singing Windmills, another play by Freud, presented by the PM Theater company in 2021. Singing Windmills portrayed Solomon Mikhoels, the great Yiddish actor and beloved leader of the Russian Jewish cultural community, murdered by Stalin in 1948. Both plays explore what it means to be a great artist, the power of theater and the fate of the Jews.
New York is lucky to have small idealistic theater groups like Five Evenings Theater, New Wave Arts, and Eventmuze, which collaborated to bring Beneath the Ice of the Vistula to the stage. Most programs show headshots of the actors, and possibly the director. This show’s program has a photo of every member — stage manager, lighting and sound designers and so on — indicating their shared sense of idealism and commitment.
It takes courage to create, especially in theater, which demands a huge outlay in time and money simply to mount a production. So New York audiences must be courageous in turn, and try productions by unfamiliar artists in unfamiliar venues, in order to be rewarded by interesting, even memorable, theatergoing experiences such as this.
Beneath the Ice of the Vistula, directed by Eduard Tolokonnikov, plays through February 28 in the West End Theatre in Manhattan.
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