Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced Thursday evening that he refused the request of Arab families from the Palestinian Authority to enter Israel for the purpose of participating in the "Joint Remembrance Day Ceremony" held by Jewish and Arab families together.
At the controverisal event that memorializes Palestinians, some alleged to have been killed while carrying out attacks against Israelis alongside Israel's fallen soldiers, is organized by the left-wing movements "Combatants for Peace" and "Forum of the Bereaved Families", representatives of four families, two of them Jewish and two more Arab, are expected to speak.
The purpose of the event, organized by numerous Israeli leftist parties, is to connect the grief on both sides of the conflict and try and reach a broader understanding through it. However, often the ceremonies over the years have hosted families of Palestinian terrorists who committed or planned attacks against Israeli citizens and were killed by IDF troops as a result.
Join us at this year’s Joint Memorial Day Ceremony, hosted by @cfpeace & @ThePCFF. CMEP is proud to be a sponsor of this historic event. Register today to help build a free, peaceful future. #JointMemorial2023 https://t.co/Ju96hL2sMM#JointMemorialDayCeremony #Israel #Palestine pic.twitter.com/1DYxuyZxf2
— CMEP (@ChurchesforMEP) April 11, 2023
In a statement from Gallant's office, it was stated that "Defense Minister Yoav Gallant responded negatively to the request made by the ‘Bereaved Families Forum’ to hold the Israeli-Palestinian Remembrance Day ceremony on the eve of Remembrance Day. In his reasoning, Minister Gallant claimed that the opening of the borders from territories of the Palestinian Authority should not be allowed due to the complex security situation in Judea and Samaria, and due to the fact that a general closure will be imposed regardless of this coming Memorial Day.”
The decision is based on the fact that on the eve of Memorial Day, the Israel Defense Forces is expected to close borders within Judea and Samaria, and Gallant does not want to exclude from it the Arabs from the Palestinian Authority who participate in the ceremony. For the past 3 years, the event has been held online, due in part to COVID, and in the years before that they were also banned by numerous defense ministers at the time.
The Supreme Court reversed the decision to ban the entry of families from the Palestinian Authority into Israel in 2019 and allowed the entry of most of the participants whose case the organizers of the ceremony appealed to the Supreme Court, despite security concerns regarding some of them.
Moral Inequivalency:
— Yisrael Medad (@ymedad) April 13, 2023
"Annual Israeli-Palestinian Joint Memorial Ceremony
April 24, 2023 (Yom Hazikaron, Israel Memorial Day Eve)
20.30 Park Ganei Yehoshua, Tel Aviv
Organized by Combatants for Peace and The Parents-Circle Families Forum"
Immoral stain.
In the left-wing movement, “Combatants for Peace” an official response to Gallant's announcement was made. "Gallant was frightened by the threat of dismissal and aligns himself completely with fascist madness and gagging. The ceremony is the way for hundreds of bereaved families to remember their loved ones, and it represents exactly the other future that can be made here: a shared and optimistic future. Thousands have already contributed to the crowdfunding of the ceremony precisely in the name of the hope that it will defeat the attempts of intimidation and silencing."
