Israel's Ben-Gvir orders police to remove Palestinian flags from public space

Israel's new far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said on Sunday that he instructed police to remove Palestinian flags from public spaces.

Israeli law does not outlaw Palestinian flags but police and soldiers are given the power to remove them in cases where they claim there is a "threat to public order".

The directive from Ben-Gvir, who heads an ultranationalist party in Benjamin Netanyahu's new government and as minister oversees the police, takes a hard line in requiring their removal.

It follows the release last week of a long-serving Palestinian prisoner, convicted of kidnapping and killing an Israeli soldier in 1983, who waved a Palestinian flag while receiving a hero's welcome in his village in northern Israel.

Ben-Gvir, in a statement, said that waving the Palestinian flag is an act 'in support of terrorism'.

"It cannot be that lawbreakers wave terrorist flags, incite and encourage terrorism, so I ordered the removal of flags supporting terrorism from the public space and to stop the incitement against Israel," Ben-Gvir said.

Palestinians within Israel's borders (excluding the occupied West Bank and the besieged coastal enclave of the Gaza Strip) account for around a fifth of the current population and most are descendants of Palestinians who remained within the newly founded state after the Zionist ethnic cleansing of the population in 1948.