JAKARTA - Israel's new right-wing National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said on Sunday he instructed police to remove the Palestinian flag from the public sphere.
Israeli law does not prohibit the Palestinian flag, but police and soldiers have the right to remove it if they think there is a threat to public order.
The directive from Ben-Gvir, who heads the ultranationalist party in Benjamin Netanyahu's new government and as the minister overseeing police, appears to be taking a hard line in requiring their removal.
It follows the release of a long-serving Palestinian prisoner, who was convicted of the kidnapping and murder of an Israeli soldier in 1983, who waved the Palestinian flag while receiving a hero's welcome at his village in northern Israel.
Ben-Gvir said in a statement that raising the Palestinian flag was an act of supporting terrorism.
"It is impossible for lawbreakers to fly terrorist flags, incite and encourage terrorism, so I ordered the lifting of flags that support terrorism from public spaces and stop incitement against Israel," Ben-Gvir said.
Arabs in Israel amounted to about a fifth of the population. Most were Palestinian descendants who remained in the newly established country after the 1948 war of independence.
They have long debated their place in Israeli politics, balancing their Palestinian heritage with their Israeli citizenship, with many identifying as or with Palestinians.
"Freedom of expression does not include the identification of terrorists and those who want to hurt IDF soldiers," he explained, citing The Jerusalem Post.
He ordered Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai to instruct his officers to remove the flag.
The order is further than the demands made by the Otzma Maddit Party in its coalition agreement, which calls for a ban on the Palestinian flag in public institutions or those that have the support of the state.
It is known, Ben-Gvir issued an order after the Palestinian flag was raised during an anti-government protest in Tel Aviv on Saturday night.
Earlier Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused demonstrators of inciting, seeking trouble with the raising of the Palestinian flag, signs comparing Justice Minister Yariv Levin with a Nazi and who said, "Free Palestine from the Zionist colonial government."
"This is a wild incitement carried out without criticism by the opposition or mainstream media," said PM Netanyahu.
"I demand that everyone stop this immediately," he added.
Israel police have sought to remove the Palestinian flag from the public sphere under the previous administration, which was led first by former prime minister Naftali Bennett and later by his successor Yair Lapid.
Among the more widely published examples where police removed the Palestinian flag from the public sphere was the funeral of the murdered journalist Al Jazeera, Shireen Abu Akleh, last May.
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