Police restrain Druze leader Amir Kneifas from attacking Likud MK Avi Dichter at an event in Karmiel in which scholarships were distributed to Druze students by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. (photo credit: ERAN GILBERT/ INTERNATIONAL FELLOWSHIP OF CHRISTIA)
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to cancel a demonstration set for Saturday night against his Jewish Nation-State Law failed Thursday night when a meeting he convened with Druze leaders ended in mutual recriminations.
Netanyahu met at his office in Tel Aviv with the Druze leaders he reached a landmark agreement with Wednesday. But the meeting was also attended by former general Amal Assad, who is one of the organizers of the demonstration and who criticized the deal.
When the spiritual leader of the Druze, Sheikh Muwafak Tarif, was speaking at the meeting, Assad interrupted him and called Israel “an Apartheid State.” That led Netanyahu to abruptly end the meeting.
“I will not accept disrespect for the prime minister of Israel and for the state from a man who calls Israel an Apartheid State,” Netanyahu said.
Earlier, Assad said the demonstration set for Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square would not be canceled. He called the agreement reached between Tarif and Netanyahu “humiliating and unacceptable.”
“We are sick of the promises of the bluffer from Balfour Street,” said Zionist Union MK Salah Saad, referring the prime minister’s residence. “Unless Netanyahu tells the nation at the Knesset that he will enact a Basic Law about the Druze in the first week after the Knesset’s recess, his proposal to the Druze is not worth the ink on the paper and it can be used to make a tiara.”
But Tarif said the Druze community had officially accepted the proposal, which he called “unique window of opportunity to bring about equality. He said the anti-Jewish Nation-State Law would become a solidarity rally with the Druze.
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Communications Minister Ayoub Kara (Likud) said that after the agreement was reached and the Druze obtained key accomplishments, there was no longer a reason for the demonstration, and it should be canceled.
Speaking at a legal conference in Eilat, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked (Bayit Yehudi) advised MKs to drop the court cases they filed against the Nation-State Law.
“The fact that MKs are petitioning against a Basic Law proves they have no understanding,” she said. “Courts intervene when laws contradict a Basic Law. The Supreme Court has no authority to overturn a Basic Law.”
Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Avi Dichter, who sponsored the bill, was physically attacked by a Druze leader at an event in Karmiel Thursday in which scholarships were distributed to Druze students.
The head of the campaign against the Nation-State Law, Dr Amir Kneifas, charged the state, calling Dichter a dog, a racist, and a Nazi, before he was restrained by police and arrested. Dichter called Kneifas’s attack on him unacceptable.
“I will not be called a Nazi,” he said. “The Nazis murdered my family.”
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