Likud Knesset Member Yisrael Katz submitted a bill Tuesday to outlaw the northern branch of the Israeli Islamic Movement, which he said calls for the destruction of Israel. The proposed law would make the Islamic organization an "illegal corporation," thus ending its legal fundraising possibilities and banning its members from running in national or local elections.


MK Katz said that the Islamic Movement in the north is "characterized by incitement and an anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish line, which is expressed in the movement's publications, in mosque sermons and other contexts. ...We are talking about a radical movement with a racist and anti-Semitic leader who has been inciting hatred against the Jewish people in the State of Israel for years."
 
The leader of the Islamic Movement's northern branch, Raad Salah, stands charged with attacking policemen at the Temple Mount after he made a fiery speech against archaeological digging and refurbishing near the holy site. He was also banned from the Temple Mount area as a result of his inflammatory rhetoric, but he continued to incite the Muslim masses against Israel from a distance. Salah recently reaffirmed statements he made at the time of the Muslim protests against the construction referring to Israel as an "occupying entity" that is "endangering Al-Aksa Mosque."

Salah has been imprisoned in the past for incitement, and is currently under investigation for having perpetrated this crime again of late.

MK Katz cited the mass rallies that the movement has held denouncing Israel and inciting the Muslim masses by spreading lies of a Jewish threat to the Al-Aksa mosque. He also emphasized the fact that the Islamic Movement uses the municipal and organizational infrastructure of those Israeli-Arab towns in which it has a strong political presence to spread its fundamentalist message.

MK Katz blamed the government's handling of the conflict over the project to replace a foot bridge to the Temple Mount for helping turn Salah into a hero.

The Islamic Movement uses municipalities of those Arab-Israeli towns in which it has a strong political presence to spread its fundamentalist message.



A bill banning the Islamic fundamentalist's activity in Israel is urgent, MK Katz said, because "just like Nasrallah became a hero after the Lebanon war, Salah became a hero in the eyes of Islamic extremists after his recent remarks... If we do not remove Salah from our midst and condemn him, we will be building an Israeli Nasrallah with our own hands."


In June 2003, Raad Salah and three other Islamic Movement leaders were charged with membership in a terrorist organization, Hamas. All four, plus Umm El-Fahm Mayor Suleimon Agbariya, were accused of contact with and providing information to foreign agents, as well as money laundering for Hamas. In a plea bargain, the suspects were convicted only of contact with a foreign agent, money laundering and related charges. Salah spent less than three years in jail.


The Meretz-Yahad party chairman, MK Yossi Beilin, said he opposes Katz's proposal, explaining that the government has created the problem of hatred toward Israel by not providing the Arab population with proper services and social programs.


Arab MKs called the proposed law "racist" and claimed that it would essentially outlaw an entire class of people, numbering in the thousands.


On January 10, 2007 the Knesset passed a preliminary reading of a related bill that would allow the District Court to revoke the citizenship of Israelis who take part in "an act that constitutes a breach of loyalty to the state." The proposed law does not define precisely what can be considered a "breach of loyalty", but it is aimed at "defending the state against those who intend to harm it," according to its sponsor, MK Gilad Erdan (Likud).