MK Jamal Zahalka (Balad) accused police of racism on Wednesday in an Interior Committee hearing regarding violent clashes between police and Druze villagers in Peki’in in late 2007. “The police are violent towards the Arab and Druze public and regard it with suspicion,” he argued.
Zahalka accused the police of “discrimination, neglect, and oppression” of Israeli Arabs, and said the violence in Peki’in could have taken place in any Arab town in Israel. Police Commissioner Dudi Cohen stood by the police’s decision to begin a large-scale arrest operation in the town, saying the force used was “reasonable.”