Updated: 07-14-2020 4:45 AM EST
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has arrested at least six Palestinians for speaking their mind on the matter of Israel’s plan to apply its laws to several West Bank areas, the AFP reported Tuesday.
In early June, Channel 13 aired a report by Tzvi Yehezkeli, a prominent Israeli journalist and documentarist, which saw Yehezkeli approach people in the streets of West Bank communities and ask them what they thought of the annexation.
Some of the people he approached said they were hoping they could get Israeli citizenship and lashed out at the PA as a “corrupt” entity that “has failed.”
“I want an Israeli identity card,” one Palestinian is heard saying. Another stated that he didn’t see “Israelis as enemies — their government is the enemy”. And a third said he “chose Israel” and wasn’t afraid to speak out publicly.
On the footage captured by the journalist, who was using a hidden camera, those who he was speaking with had their faces were blurred out, and their voices were distorted to conceal their identity.
Nevertheless, according to Tzvi Yehezkeli, at least six of those who broke the line with the official PA stance on the annexation were arrested by its security forces, according to members of their families.
“I was surprised to see that even though I’ve blurred the faces of all the people I filmed and distorted their voices, the Authority has reached and arrested (some) of them, it’s just amazing,” he told AFP.
West Bank officials denied the report on the arrests. However, the agency has been able to accumulate some corroborating accounts, including a relative of a person arrested after being featured in the report, who also said he favored annexation and was hoping for an Israeli ID.
