Yesterday evening, the Haifa Magistrate Court extended the detention of 11 detainees from the Umm al-Fahm demonstration, including 4 minors, without there being any deliberations in the court session. More than 80 Palestinian students were also arbitrarily expelled from Israeli universities for their reaction against the war on Gaza.

Adalah, the legal center for Arab rights inside Palestine, said: The police violently arrested demonstrators yesterday evening from a demonstration in Umm al-Fahm denouncing the war on Gaza. Although the defense team and the family were present in court since ten in the morning, the police did not attend the detainees until 15:15, via video technology. The judge justified her decision to extend the detention until Saturday night on the pretext that the court closes its doors two hours before Saturday, that is, at three-thirty (a quarter of an hour after the start of the session), and there is no room for the session to continue.

Adalah and the defense attorneys filed an appeal with the Central Court, requesting that a hearing be held and the appeal be heard tonight. The Director General of the Adalah Center, Dr. Hassan Jabareen: “We have never witnessed an order of this kind, in which the court decided to extend detention without legal deliberations.”

Also, on Friday, the head of the Supreme Follow-up Committee for the Arab Public, Muhammad Baraka, sent a letter to the heads of academic institutions, led by the University of Haifa, the Bezalel College of Arts and Design, the “Manhal” College of Administration, and the Western Galilee College, to demand that they retract their decisions to remove students from education and even dismiss and vacate university housing. For dozens of Arab students due to their interaction with the current events in the country on social networking sites.

Adalah pointed out that Israeli academic institutions launched an unprecedented campaign of measures against dozens of Arab students, immediately suspending their education or even effectively expelling them, without prior warning, and prior to holding disciplinary sessions, against the backdrop of their sharing content on their social media sites, and the three institutions mentioned above were the ones who The largest number of disciplinary measures received by the Adalah Center out of dozens of complaints, and the most severe ones.

The text of the letter stated that more than 80 cases of arbitrary measures such as those against Arab students in universities and academic colleges were monitored and dealt with, the vast majority of which fall within the category of constitutional freedom of expression and expression of solidarity with our people, the victims of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip.

The follow-up committee called for the cancellation of all measures they had initiated against the students, in clear violation of the scope of their legal powers and without taking any of the measures required to preserve their rights.

The Higher Follow-up Committee for the Arab Public denounced the rush of academic institutions to take arbitrary, unilateral decisions, and the statements of some of them to punish and prosecute anyone who publishes inflammatory publications, as they give the impression that students’ cases are decided without them being broadcast at all, and in addition, they assume that the student is a suspected Arab. Previously supported violence and killing of civilians. This is at a time when many Arab students are exposed to defamation, incitement, and hate campaigns on social media sites and elsewhere, in a way that puts their lives and security at risk, even though they have not published any post that violates the law or incites or supports violence.

Baraka called on academic institutions to preserve the right to freedom of expression for all students, even in the most difficult circumstances, and to work to calm the situation and create a safe environment that encourages tolerance, acceptance of others and understanding on university campuses to make it possible to provide an appropriate social fabric for students to return to school.