Daily World · New York, New York · 16 July 1967

CP-1967-029

Stop the arrests and the police terror! Release the political prisoners

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Israel

Transcribed from the clipping

“The Central Committee protests strongly against the arrest of persons opposed to the war, against the arrest of leaders and members of the Communist Party of Israel and others. Immediately with the opening of the war, many administrative arrests were made according to the British Mandatory oppressive emergency rules from the year 1945. The following comrades were arrested: Zahy KARKABY, member of the Secretariat of the C.C.; the C.C.-members: Mun’em JARJURAH and Othman ABU-RASS; Tawfiq ZAYYAD, Councillor of Nazareth; the members of the editorial board of the organ of the Communist Party (Arabic), AL-ITTIHAD: Ali ASHOUR, Mohammad KHAS, Samih EL-KASSEM and Mahmoud DARWISH; the members of the C.C. of the Young Communist League of Israel, Salem JUBRAN and George GHREIB; Abdul-Hamid ABU-ITA, member of the C.P. district committee of the Triangle and Councillor of Taibeh; Assad MAKI, member of the district committee in Tel-Aviv-Jaffa, secretaries of local branches of the Party and other activists. Some of the arrested were released after 14 days. The arrests of others was prolonged and more were arrested. Lately arrested were: the member of the C.C. and the head of the Communist group in the town council of Nazareth, comrade Fuad KHOURY; the member of the C.C. and councillor of Acre, Ramsi KHOURY; the lawyer Abdul-Hafiz DARAWSHEH, councillor of Nazareth; Youssif SH’HADEH, deputy mayor of Kufr-Yassif; Nassri EL-MOOR, councillor of Ibbeleen, and others. All these comrades are still imprisoned, without guilt and without trial. Other Arab citizens, who are known to be against the war, were arrested too… In the Arab districts of Israel, heaviest restrictions of the freedom of movement were introduced. The Arab people living in those areas were ordered to remain at their homes for several days, without any possibility to go to work and earn a living. In some places, like Taibeh and Kufr-Yassif, police-terror reigned. People were brought to the police-stations and beaten up most brutally ‘to teach them a lesson.’ While doing this, the policemen called: ‘The time has come to settle accounts’ — ‘Democracy has come to an end’ — etc.… The aim of the terror is to quiet the voice of the other Israel, the one which is against war, against aggression and conquests, against hostilities aimed at the Arab people, the voice which fights for a just peace between Israel and the Arab states.”

Context added by this archive

Fourteen Palestinians named in one column, six weeks after the June war. Two of them are among the best known poets their people have produced: Mahmoud Darwish, who is in this archive again in 1994 and lying in a Houston hospital in 2008, and Samih al-Qasim. A third, Tawfiq Zayyad, turns up nine years later reciting a poem to an American convention. The arrests are made under emergency regulations the British wrote in 1945, and the statement says so in its third sentence. The capitals are the paper’s own.

Cite this item

"Stop the arrests and the police terror! Release the political prisoners," Daily World, 16 July 1967. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1967-029. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1967-029

Elsewhere in the archive

• Israeli Arabs and Jews unite for right of villagers to returnDaily World · 23 February 1973 · the same newspaper
• A Solution for Palestinians?Toronto Star · 7 June 1967 · the same year
• Refugee Crisis Forming On Jordan’s West BankCourier-Journal · 13 June 1967 · the same year
• The Endlessly Embattled Land Of PalestineCalgary Herald · 14 June 1967 · the same year