FILE PHOTO: Arab politician Ahmad Tibi, head of the Ta’al party, visits residents of Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood October 17, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo

As the number of killings in Israeli Arab society rises — as of now 175 Israeli Arabs have been killed in internal Arab crime in 2023 — the Palestinian accusations against Israel get wilder and wilder.

The newest libel was voiced by one of the regular columnists for the official Palestinian Authority (PA) daily.

Bassem Barhoum alleged that the killing of Israeli Arabs is carried out according to a plan devised by “Israeli forces,” with the goal of creating fear that makes Israeli Arabs want to “emigrate”:

It is clear that the Israeli forces, which stand behind this plan, rely on an atmosphere of strife, fear, and terror prevailing in order to make the Palestinian residents inside the Green Line [i.e., Palestinian term for Israel; see below] think about emigrating and saving themselves and their families. [emphasis added]

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 5, 2023]

Palestinian Media Watch already exposed that Palestinians and some Israeli Arabs have blamed Israel for the surge in crime within Israeli Arab society, claiming it is a “deliberate Israeli strategy” to “dismantle the Arab public” in Israel.

But this latest PA libel goes even further, by specifying who is responsible. The official PA daily columnist suggested that the masked Israeli Arab killers are in fact “special Israeli forces from the army’s undercover brigades,” who are murdering innocent Arabs “in an intensifying systematic manner”:

Who said that these masked people who are spreading crime are not special Israeli forces from the [Israeli] army’s undercover brigades?

What we are witnessing today … is an act by a security establishment and dedicated intelligence forces that are managing the acts of crime in an intensifying systematic manner.” [emphasis added]

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 5, 2023]

A prominent member of the Israeli Arab society, former Israeli Arab MP Wasil Taha, has attempted to use the libel to fuel civil unrest within Israel, calling on Israeli Arabs to increase “civil disobedience,” which should then develop into “an extensive phenomenon of struggle” across all of Israel:

Former Israeli Arab Parliament Member Wasil Taha: “I personally accuse the Israeli establishment that is leading the organized crime in the Arab sector … The issue of civil disobedience and raising [the subject] in these circumstances is appropriate, and it must be strengthened. We need to take action. We need to start with civil disobedience in some of the villages and cities until it spreads and becomes a phenomenon, an extensive phenomenon of struggle from the Negev in the south to Fassouta in the north.”

[Official PA TV, Talk of the Hour, Sept. 1, 2023]

The author is a senior analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article was originally published.