Around 50,000 women, men, young people and children marched along Sakhnin\u2019s main road all the way to the Yuvalim junction, near the Misgav police station. According to some estimates, this was the largest demonstration by the Arab\u2011Palestinian public within the Green Line since 2019. A demonstration was also held in Rahat, and several additional protest vigils were organised at other locations \u2014 including a cross-national vigil initiated by members of Socialist Struggle Movement (SSM) on the Tel Aviv University campus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thousands in Sakhnin shouted against crime, the racist police, and the government: \u201cNetanyahu, you despicable, Arab blood is not cheap\u201d, \u201cMy people are free, my people have decided, crime will not pass\u201d, and also\u00a0\u201cThe people want to topple crime\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 \u2013 echoing the popular slogan from the revolutionary wave in the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, \u201cThe people want to topple the regime\u201d. Some protesters also chanted: \u201cThe police are the source of the problem\u201d and \u201cA criminals\u2019 police\u201d, along with more general slogans of the struggle against the national oppression of the Palestinian people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A team from SSM took part in the demonstration and chanting, spoke with protesters, and distributed placards with the words: \u201cGeneral strike! Against crime, racist police and poverty\u201d, \u201cCrime, massacres and repression \u2014 bring down the government of blood, the occupation, and rule of capital\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the time of writing, 20 Arab\u2011Palestinian citizens in the 1948 territories [the land that became Israel in 1948] have been murdered since the beginning of 2026 \u2014 almost one murder per day on average. This marks a further worsening of the epidemic of killings, after 252 Palestinian citizens of Israel were murdered last year \u2014 an unprecedented number, set in the midst of the war of annihilation in Gaza and the massive displacement measures in the West Bank. The dehumanisation of Palestinians does not stop at the Green Line, and combined with the economic and social crisis, it further increases bloodletting, certainly in the eyes of the police tops appointed by Ben\u2011Gvir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is rare for indictments to be filed in homicide cases when the victims are Arab. According to data from\u00a0 Abraham Initiatives, the Israeli police prosecution rate in such cases for 2025\u00a0is estimated at 8%<\/a>! In recent years the figure stood at around 20%, compared with roughly 65% of incidents in which the victims are Jewish. Most of the murderers are still walking free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Sakhnin in particular, organised\u2011crime gangs have long been terrorising the city\u2019s streets through daily shootings at homes and businesses, including demands for \u2018protection\u2019 money. Many of the shooting incidents were filmed by the gangs themselves, who circulated the footage on social media in order to sow fear and increase the pressure on those who refuse to pay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By contrast, Ben\u2011Gvir\u2019s police is seen mainly during home demolitions, harassment, political persecution and the suppression of demonstrations and arrests \u2014 and it deployed a heavy presence during the Sakhnin demonstration as well.\u00a0The deadly police raid in Tarabin<\/a>, in the Naqab\/Negev, during which police shot and killed Muhammad Hussein Tarabin al\u2011Sana in his home, once again illustrated its real role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The mass demonstration in Sakhnin followed two days of strike action in the city, which began on Tuesday, 20 January, at the initiative of local business owners who launched a commercial strike, alongside a decision by the parents\u2019 committee to shut down the education system. Sakhnin municipality\u00a0initially opposed<\/a>\u00a0the parent committee\u2019s decision, but quickly reversed course under public pressure and announced that it would join the strike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The local initiative filled the vacuum left by the High Follow\u2011Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, the leaderships of the established parties among the Arab\u2011Palestinian public, and the leaderships of the workers\u2019 organisations \u2014 and it spread rapidly. On Tuesday and Wednesday a series of demonstrations and protest vigils took place across the country, and dozens of Arab municipalities announced, one after another, that they were joining the strike initiative. On Wednesday evening, under pressure from below, the countrywide Arab schools parents\u2019 committee declared a shutdown of the entire education system in Arab localities, and the chair of the Follow\u2011Up Committee, Jamal Zahalka (a former Balad party leader) announced that a countrywide strike would take place on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unlike many protest strikes declared by the Follow\u2011Up Committee, which often amounted to a symbolic commercial shutdown and the closure of some municipal institutions and parts of the education system, Thursday\u2019s strike included additional initiatives aimed at expanding its impact so that it would be felt beyond the Arab localities. Hundreds of doctors and pharmacists from Sakhnin \u2014 many of whom also work outside the city \u2014 organised in WhatsApp groups to strike, despite receiving no backing from the leaderships of their representative unions, and arrived at the demonstration as a bloc wearing their work uniforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ibrahim Othman, a striking pharmacist from Sakhnin who took part in the demonstration, told us:\u00a0\u201cThe pharmacists\u2019 organising began yesterday. We organised in the evening, and within a few hours it was decided that we would strike. All the pharmacists working in Sakhnin and outside Sakhnin joined this protest. It started in WhatsApp groups. It came from below.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0He added what he believes is needed to build the struggle:\u00a0\u201cWe will shut down the entire medical sector \u2014 doctors, pharmacists, nurses\u2026 and also bus drivers, lorry drivers, we will shut down the entire economy.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Khaled Abu\u2011Saleh, a doctor from Sakhnin,\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0the news site Arab 48 during the demonstration that the strike initiative was organised on Wednesday in a WhatsApp group that, within a few hours, more than 400 doctors from Sakhnin had joined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Physician Du\u2019aa Ghanayem Hamza conveyed a message to Arab medical staff in an\u00a0interview<\/a>\u00a0with Arab 48 at the demonstration:\u00a0\u201cWe make up a very large percentage of the state\u2019s healthcare system \u2014 we have power\u201d<\/em>\u00a0(20% of doctors, 27% of nurses and dentists, 49% of pharmacists<\/a>).\u00a0\u201cAll of us have had the same fear in recent months \u2014 whether to take action, whether I might be harmed. And unfortunately, we have experienced that fear over the past two or three years. But it\u2019s important to remember that when we are all together, when we make collective decisions and implement them, we \u2014 the Arab medical teams \u2014 make up [a high proportion], and there are quite a few Jewish doctors who stand in solidarity with us and participate. So when a large percentage of us take part in actions, the possibility of harming us is significantly reduced. I call on people to join the strike and the additional protest steps that we will examine and announce soon.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, lawyers, engineers, and significantly some construction workers in the city also took part in the strike \u2014 although the scale is not yet clear. Protesters blocked the entrances to Sakhnin during the day, to strengthen the strike, and according to some reports many workers stayed home and did not go to work. This dynamic, which included substantial mobilisation from below, elements of a labour strike, and strike\u2011enforcement pickets, recalls aspects of the \u201cDignity Strike\u201d of May 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The chair of the Sakhnin parents\u2019 committee, Fadi Tarad, told SSM activists that the Afifi Group bus company, which operates the city\u2019s public transport, also halted its services under pressure from the parents\u2019 committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the demonstration, party representatives, the leadership of the Follow\u2011Up Committee, municipalities heads and political activists convened in the Sakhnin city council building to discuss the next steps. It was decided that the shutdown of the education system in Sakhnin would continue on Saturday (a school day in the city). The chair of the Follow\u2011Up Committee, Zahalka, proposed holding a large demonstration in Tel Aviv soon, although initially the statement issued after the meeting did not include any concrete announcements regarding the continuation of the struggle (later it was confirmed that a rally in Tel Aviv will indeed be organised on 31 January).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the meantime, just as there was no need to wait for decisions from the High Follow\u2011Up Committee in order to begin building the current wave of protest, so too it is possible to continue with initiatives aimed at further developing, on the ground, the relative momentum that has been created \u2014 including as part of preparations for a major rally in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. It is also worth recalling that in early 2021,\u00a0a wave of protest in Umm al\u2011Fahm<\/a>\u00a0strengthened social solidarity and deterrence against the crime gangs, with a sharp drop in the number of shooting incidents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During the meeting in Sakhnin, pressure was placed on the leaders of the four political parties based in the Arab\u2011Palestinian community within the Green Line \u2014 Hadash\/al-Jabha, Ta\u2019al, Balad and the United Arab List \u2014 by some activists and attendees in the room to commit to running together in the next election on a single list, based on the view that such unity is necessary to advance the struggle. The party leaders signed a commitment in principle to promote such a list, although it remains unclear whether they will ultimately reach agreement on running jointly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, the years of the Joint List\u2019s existence in the past \u2014 and even more so the role of the United Arab List under Mansour Abbas, who joined the capitalist occupation government of Bennett\u2013Lapid \u2014 have provided a clear warning sign against the idea of such an electoral bloc between forces from the left and the right, which in itself cannot deliver the desired results. The alignment of forces that is needed is one capable of strengthening a strategy for building a mass struggle around a left\u2011wing platform of radical reforms, as part of a fight to end discrimination and eradicate poverty through socialist change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The current strike organising and the mass demonstration in Sakhnin have, on the one hand, exposed the lack of direction of the leaderships of those parties \u2014 which, generally speaking, do not advance a clear strategy for shifting the balance of forces in the struggle against the racist government of blood \u2014 and, on the other hand, have given expression to some of the pent\u2011up anger among a large layer of the public that is ready to fight to end the crisis and achieve real change in living conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rapid organising of workers in the healthcare system for strike action, within a short time, points to the need to apply pressure on workers\u2019 committees and on the leaderships of the trade unions to take concrete steps and join the struggle, particularly through strike action, in an effort to succeed in shutting down key sectors of the economy in a way that disrupts \u201cbusiness as usual\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Efforts to effectively expand actions that disrupt the economy will also need to be combined with continued cross\u2011community public explanation work, organising to broaden strike\u2011enforcement pickets, and, decisively, mobilising sections of organised labour so that strike action is implemented in a generalised manner, also without any dependency on the consent of employers \u2014 most of whom, sooner or later, will not willingly accept damage to their profits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is positive that the trade union organisation\u00a0Power to the Workers<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Social Workers\u2019 Union<\/a>\u00a0issued basic solidarity statements supporting the strike (even though they overlooked the dimension of national discrimination, and Power to the Workers relied on calling on employers to permit workers\u2019 protest action). But active steps are needed to shut down workplaces with the demands to end enforced poverty, national oppression and crime. Massive pressure \u2018from below\u2019 can also push the right\u2011wing bureaucratic leadership of the General Histadrut trade union federation to take organisational steps \u2014 and left-wing political coalition Hadash\/al-Jabha, which holds positions within the Histadrut, including the leadership of regional branches, must also apply pressure in this direction \u2014 and help harness the weight of organised labour as part of a broader struggle against the entire agenda of Netanyahu and Ben\u2011Gvir\u2019s capitalist government of death, and for profound change in the daily reality of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Around 50,000 women, men, young people and children marched along Sakhnin\u2019s main road all the way to the Yuvalim junction, near the Misgav police station. According to some estimates, this was the largest demonstration by the Arab\u2011Palestinian public within the Green Line since 2019. A demonstration was also held in Rahat, and several additional protest vigils were organised at other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,18],"tags":[20,76,21,19,22],"class_list":["post-54","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arab-palestinian-community-in-israel","category-social-protest","tag-gang-violence","tag-high-follow-up-committee-hfc","tag-protest","tag-sakhnin","tag-strike"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialiststruggle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialiststruggle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialiststruggle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialiststruggle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialiststruggle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/socialiststruggle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":555,"href":"https:\/\/socialiststruggle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions\/555"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialiststruggle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialiststruggle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialiststruggle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialiststruggle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Indictments Are Almost Never Filed Against Murderers<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Strike Organising by Professionals and Other Workers<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
What Next?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Arab Blood Is Not Cheap \u2014 Continue Building the Struggle<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Equality, Housing and Livelihood Instead of Poverty, Oppression and Displacement<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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