Israeli lawmaker resigns over ‘harassment’ of Palestinians, plunging government into minority

Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi, a lawmaker of the left-wing Meretz party, said she opposed what she called the government’s rightward shift and accused it of “disgracefully harassing the society I come from.”Her resignation means Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has the support of just 59 of the 120 members of the Knesset and now leads a minority government — potentially pointing to yet another round of elections in the country after years of political instability.”In recent months, out of narrow political considerations the leaders of the coalition have chosen to preserve and strengthen its right-wing flank,” Rinawie Zoabi wrote in her unexpected resignation letter Thursday. “The last month, the month of Ramadan, has been unbearably difficult,” she added.”The scenes from the Temple Mount of violent policemen confronting a crowd of worshipers, and the funeral of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, led me to only one valuable conclusion: no more,” Rinawie Zoabi wrote. “I cannot continue to support the existence of a coalition that disgracefully harasses the society I came from.”The Temple Mount is the holy site in Jerusalem’s Old City known in Arabic as the Haram al-Sharif or Noble Sanctuary, containing the Al Aqsa mosque. Television footage from Under IDF policy, a criminal investigation is not launched automatically if a death occurs during an active combat situation, unless there is credible and immediate suspicion of a criminal offense identified during the event.Shireen Abu Akleh’s brother Tony told CNN he was not surprised by the report that there would be no criminal investigation, saying he had not “expected much from the Israeli side and it was obvious that they are biased,” Tony Abu Akleh said.”From our side … we will continue the investigation and pursue a just probe in the killing of my sister Shireen, and we will also stress on the importance that the US government should take immediate action in bringing those responsible and accountable to full prosecution by the law,” he said. “Shireen is a US citizen killed abroad and the US should take immediate action to investigate this crime and her killing against a female American journalist,” he argued.Israeli human rights group Yesh Din said on Thursday that a failure to investigate the killing would represent “not an exception, but rather the rule.””This system has proven time and again that it is incapable and unwilling to carry out investigations and prosecutions to the standards that international law demands,” Ziv Stahl, executive director of the organization, said in a statement.Releasing its analysis of data from 2019 and 2020, the group said that the odds a Palestinian would see his or her complaint result in the prosecution of a soldier was just 2%. The group also said 72% of complaints filed from 2019 to 2020 about suspected offenses by soldiers against Palestinians were closed with no criminal investigation.