By
Aryeh DayanThe similarities between three minors arrested during rioting in Nazareth the day after Rosh Hashanah and three minors arrested in Afula the day after Yom Kippur are uncanny. All six youths were born to and raised by well-established and comfortable middle-class families. All are considered good students in their respective schools. Both trios were arrested, a week apart, for allegedly committing similar crimes, and none of the individuals had a prior criminal record. All six are now being represented in court by the same lawyer - Attorney Ahmed Masalha.The parallel stories of these six young men, whose names cannot be published due to their age, could ostensibly be used by the police and representatives of the State Prosecutor's Office to prove that equal treatment is given to Arab youths who threw stones at policemen in Nazareth and Jewish youths who shouted "death to the Arabs" and attacked Arab passers-by there.
However when the Knesset's Interior Committee convenes this morning to discuss the issue of minors arrested during the rioting in October, official spokesmen will refrain from mentioning their story - because the similarities between the two groups of youths ended the moment they were arrested.
The Arab youths, three high school students aged 15 and 16, were arrested in Nazareth on October 3 during one of the stormy riots that took place in the Arab sector. The next day, they were brought to court to extend their detention. A police representative argued that two of the youngsters, brothers from the village of Iksal, were suspected of disturbing public order and attempting to stab a policeman. The third youth, a resident of Nazareth, was suspected of rioting and trying to attack a policeman who was doing his job. A judge from the juvenile section of the Nazareth Magistrates Court agreed to the police request and extended their detention for another week.
The indictments against them were prepared quickly and submitted to the court during that time. The prosecution attached to the indictment a request to detain the three until the end of legal proceedings against them. Judge George Azoulay, a juvenile judge in Nazareth Magistrates Court, deemed the request unjustified. He saw before him three youths from good homes, high school students with no previous criminal record. Judge Azoulay felt there was no reason, even if the three did indeed participate in the demonstrations and even if they did throw stones at policemen, to prevent them from continuing their studies during the course of their trial. He therefore instructed that they be released to house arrest and allowed to go out each day to attend school.
Azoulay announced his decision on Sunday morning, October 8, the eve of Yom Kippur. A prosecution representative asked him to delay the release of the three by 48 hours so that the prosecution could, immediately after Yom Kippur, appeal their release to the District Court. Azoulay agreed to this and instructed that the three youths be returned to detention in the meantime.
Nissim Maman, the Nazareth District Court judge who heard the state's appeal the day after Yom Kippur, did indeed overrule Azoulay's decision, and ordered that the three youths be kept in jail until the conclusion of proceedings. Maman accepted the argument of the prosecution, whose representative declared that the need to distance the three from any chance to take part in the ongoing rioting overrode their right to continue attending school. The prosecution expressed doubt that their parents could prevent them from participating in protests, and Judge Maman felt that this doubt was justified.
Maman maintained this position even after he was told that the principal of the school where the three are students had expressed willingness to personally guarantee that they would no longer participate in demonstrations or other protests.
Even after the lawyer pointed out to him that no date had yet been determined for the start of proceedings against the youths, and that there was therefore a reasonable possibility that their detention could last many weeks, perhaps even months, Maman was adamant.
While these three Arab youths were being taken from Judge Maman's chambers back to jail, the Afula police arrested the three Jewish youths. The indictments against them were drawn up even faster and submitted to the court within two days. These indictments state that the three high school students, aged 15, 16 and 17, were charged with "congregating together with hundreds of others with aim of disturbing the peace" on the night Yom Kippur ended, around 8 P.M., on the roads leading to Upper Afula and Givat Hamoreh. The disturbances, the indictment further states, lasted until around midnight and the three accused took an active part in it, acting in a way that "could instill fear in the public." Furthermore, "They burned tires and shouted 'death to the Arabs."
The three boys, the indictment continues, "repeated their actions" the next afternoon as well, joining an earlier gathering in the Afula industrial zone, as they shouted "death to the Arabs." The indictment states that one of the three youths "threw stones then at a restaurant owned by Muhammed Zoabi," and that one of his friends "threw stones at a restaurant owned by Issam Amara." They were charged with "forbidden gathering," "rioting" and "causing damage with malicious intent."
The prosecution asked to detain them until the conclusion of proceedings and again encountered resistance from the court. Judge Dana Marshak-Marom, a juvenile judge in the Afula Magistrates Court, rejected the request, ordered that the three be released to house arrest, expressed confidence in their parents' ability to prevent them from attending additional demonstrations and determined that "despite the danger presented by the accused, it is possible to suffice with an alternative detention," i.e., house arrest.
Again the prosecution appealed to the District Court in Nazareth, and the appeal this time was presented to Judge Hashem Khatib for a ruling. Khatib's ruling on the matter of the Jewish detainees was the reverse of Maman's ruling on the Arab detainees: while Maman accepted the state's appeal and left the Arab youths in jail, Khatib rejected the state's appeal and approved the release of the three Jewish boys to house arrest. The prosecution did not appeal this decision to the Supreme Court, and allowed the three Jewish boys to return home, three days after they were first detained.
That day marked the 10th day of detention for the Arab youths, who were in jail until the conclusion of proceedings. "Youths who join a crowd that has been riled up by racist cries of 'death to the Arabs' and participate in searches for Arabs in order to harm them just because they are Arabs, are undoubtedly dangerous to public security and the danger they present is proved by their actions," Judge Khatib wrote in the explanation of his decision to release the three to house arrest. "On the other hand, these are minors aged 16, 15 and 17, and this is their first arrest. From the information before me, it appears that until the case at hand, they behaved in a normative fashion."
The question under discussion, Khatib explained, is this: Are the demonstrations and riots continuing, or has calm been restored, making possible the release of the youths to house arrest without fear that they will revert to their previous actions.
"It is true that it is still too early to tell, because there has been a genuine calming of the situation, but there is still no guarantee that things have quieted down and the situation is back to normal," he wrote on October 13. "However, in the last two days, there has a been a certain calm apparent in areas inside the Green Line which can also support the ruling of the lower court on releasing them to an alternative detention." The prosecution refrained, as mentioned, from appealing the decision, and the three Jewish youths returned to their homes and schools.
Encouraged by his success with his Jewish clients, Attorney Masalha sought to do the same for his Arab clients. Based on the district court's ruling that "there are signs of a restoration of calm in areas inside the Green Line," he approached the Magistrates Court and asked for a new hearing on the decision to keep the three Arab youths in custody. He argued that the decision to detain them was based on the prosecution's determination that the accused should be held as long as the riots continue, so that they cannot participate in them.
This time, however, a surprise awaited attorney Masalha. The prosecution, which in the hearing on the Jews, had not disputed the court's ruling regarding a restoration of calm, presented a police document prior to the hearing on the Arabs' case, seeking to prove that the rioting had not calmed down. Police Superintendent Reuven Raveh of the Amakim district police, signed a document stating that during the week of October 10-17, there were no less than 73 incidents of disturbances. Judge Azoulay, of the Nazareth Magistrates Court, read the document, was convinced that it destroyed the basis of Attorney Masalha's arguments, and rejected his request for another hearing on the detention of the Arab youths.
Masalha did not give up, and appealed Azoulay's decision to the District Court. The appeal was submitted for a ruling to Judge Khatib, who just a few days earlier had released the three Jewish youths. Based on the wording of his decision, it is clear that Khatib was not pleased by the submission of the police document. First he asked, almost rhetorically, why in the previous hearing, which dealt with the matter of the detained Jews, "Why wasn't I presented with a list of the violent incidents related to the same background?" Afterward, he examined the document and determined that "the overwhelming majority of incidents specified in it actually happened in Jewish communities, and only a few took place in communities in the Arab sector." Eventually, he decided that the document was not enough to prevent the release of the youths, accepted the appeal and sent them off to house arrest.
"The appellants are minors, aged 15 and 16, high school students, with many achievements in their studies and sons of normative families," he wrote in words very similar to those used to describe the Jewish youths. "The case before us is their first clash with the law, their behavior up until this case was exemplary and satisfactory to all those who came into contact with them. There is cause to assume that they did what is attributed to them after being swept away by others who are older than they."
Attorney Masalha's joy upon hearing Judge Khatib's decision was premature. The prosecution, which had refrained from appealing Khatib's decision to release the Jewish youths from Afula, now rushed to appeal his decision to release the Arab youths from Nazareth. In its appeal to the Supreme Court, the state again submitted the police document. Justice Mishael Cheshin, who heard the appeal, got the opposite impression from Judge Khatib.
"Those 73 incidents, whose details, I, of course, will not get into," Cheshin wrote, hinting at Khatib's determination that most of them took place in Jewish communities, "revolve around intentional and planned acts to cause damage to people and property. Especially in these days, we cannot say that these actions are spontaneous or were taken in self-defense. These actions are acts of aggression, serious aggression, and the overall impression that arises from these events is a serious one. Indeed, most of the incidents - most, but not all - were specific incidents of stone-throwing, arson and other serious actions; yet the threat to human life is not diminished even if a rock is thrown toward someone's head during a localized incident." Based on this explanation, Justice Cheshin decided to accept the state's appeal and leave the three Arab youths in custody. They have been in detention for over a month, and the end of the legal proceedings against them is still far off.
Members of the Knesset's Interior Committee, which will today discuss the detention of minors during the October rioting, will hear from a police representative that there are 32 minors being detained until the conclusion of proceedings against them - 24 Arabs and eight Jews. From Justice Ministry representatives, the court will hear opinions similar to those that State Prosecutor Edna Arbel wrote to the District Attorneys offices, directing them to take a tough stand: "In light of the importance of detaining rioters until the conclusion of proceedings as a means of controlling the wave of violence, a tough policy should be adopted with regard to detention of those who take part in riots and acts of violence, Arabs and Jews alike, until the conclusion of proceedings." Arbel's instructions do not differentiate between adults and minors.
"The state prosecutor's tough policy has become a policy of collective punishment," says Attorney Jadir Nicola, who is coordinating the handling of the cases of those detained in October for Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in “Israel”. "The policy on Arab detainees is to oppose any release, regardless of the circumstances. Such a policy is not in line with the detention law, which requires that the individual circumstances and alternate detentions be considered."
Nicola tells of a minor from Acre who has been detained until the conclusion of proceedings, even though two days prior to his arrest he was injured in a car accident, and of a 19-year-old from Iksal, who, because of his detention until the conclusion of proceedings, may lose his chance of admission to the Hebrew University medical school.
Attorney Nicola, who was invited to appear today before the Knesset Interior Committee, intends to present data showing that contrary to what is said in Arbel's document, the detention policy differentiates between Jews and Arabs. In the rioting that took place between September 28 and October 30, the data shows, the police arrested 1,000 “Israeli” citizens - 34 percent of them Jews and 66 percent Arabs. Up until October 30, 314 indictments have been issued; 79 percent of the Arabs have been charged. The number of people detained until the conclusion of proceedings on that day stood at 184 - 84 percent of them are Arabs.