UPDATES WITH NEW DETAILS, CHANGES HEADLINE, DECK
By Zein Khalil, Rania Abu Shamala and Tarek Chouiref
JERUSALEM / ISTANBUL (AA) - Israeli police on Sunday released former Arab Knesset member Haneen Zoabi after questioning her for several hours on allegations of “incitement to terrorism.”
Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Zoabi was freed without restrictive conditions, but was required to appear again for further investigation.
The broadcaster said police interrogated Zoabi following her detention in a raid at dawn on her home in Nazareth, northern Israel, over complaints filed in recent months regarding a speech she delivered at a pro-Palestine conference in Vienna in October 2024.
“It was not Hamas that resisted, but the Palestinian people… Yes, it is impossible to separate Hamas from the Palestinian people. It is impossible to separate them. Those who entered on Oct. 7 did not enter Israeli territory, but their own land. This is their (occupied) land,” Zoabi reportedly told the conference.
Israel’s public broadcaster KAN said Zoabi repeated these remarks during her interrogation, and noted that a possible indictment is being considered as her files have already been referred to the prosecution.
In a statement, police claimed that Zoabi’s comments “carried suspicion of inciting to terror.”
Zoabi’s lawyer, Hassan Jabareen, said the former Arab lawmaker was “illegally detained.”
“These are old charges of incitement to and support for terrorism, not a recent incident that would justify a police raid or immediate arrest,” Jabareen, director of the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, told Channel 12.
He added that the usual procedure in such cases is a routine summon for questioning, not a midnight detention.
Jabareen described Zoabi’s arrest as “a political move designed to serve National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, as we have seen in his conduct toward Arab citizens.”
“Ben-Gvir is not acting as a minister of national security but as a political activist seeking headlines. He turns every incident into a media spectacle to consolidate control and power, even at the expense of basic rights,” he said.
He stressed that the fact the case was leaked to the media before the investigation even began “proves it was a political show.”
Zoabi served in the Knesset between 2009 and 2019 with the Balad, a left-wing party. She is known for her staunch opposition to Israel’s discriminatory policies against Palestinian citizens, and its repressive practices toward Palestinians in the territories occupied since 1967.
Her arrest and release came as Israel, with US support, has been waging a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, where more than 65,000 people have been killed, and a destructive military assault in the West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023.
For decades, Israel has occupied Palestine and territories in Syria and Lebanon, and it continues to reject withdrawal and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital on the pre-1967 borders.