JERUSALEM / ISTANBUL

Israeli police on Sunday arrested former Arab Knesset member Haneen Zoabi over alleged “incitement to terrorism.”

Israel’s Channel 13 reported that Zoabi was taken in for questioning Sunday morning, saying the arrest followed complaints filed in recent months over a speech she delivered at a pro-Palestine conference held in Vienna in October 2024.

The channel added that police arrived at her home in Nazareth, northern Israel, before taking her to a police station.

In a statement, police claimed that Zoabi’s comments “carried suspicion of inciting to terror.”

Zoabi’s lawyer, Hassan Jabareen, said the former Arab lawmaker was “illegally detained.”

“These are old charges of incitement to and support for terrorism, not a recent incident that would justify a police raid or immediate arrest,” Jabareen, the director of the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, told Channel 12.

He added that the usual procedure in such cases is a routine summon for questioning, not a midnight detention.

Jabareen described Zoabi’s arrest as “a political move designed to serve National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, as we have seen in his conduct toward Arab citizens.”

“Ben-Gvir is not acting as a minister of national security but as a political activist seeking headlines. He turns every incident into a media spectacle to consolidate control and power, even at the expense of basic rights,” he said.

He stressed that the fact the case was leaked to the media before the investigation even began “proves it was a political show.”

Zoabi served in the Knesset between 2009 and 2019 with the Balad, a left-wing party. She is known for her staunch opposition to Israel’s discriminatory policies against Palestinian citizens, and its repressive practices toward Palestinians in the territories occupied since 1967.

Her arrest comes as Israel, with US support, has been waging a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, where more than 65,000 people have been killed, and a destructive military assault in the West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023.

For decades, Israel has occupied Palestine and territories in Syria and Lebanon, and it continues to reject withdrawal and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital on the pre-1967 borders.​​​​​​​