Saudi Arabia has put dozens of Palestinian activists on trial, accusing them of supporting the Gaza-based rulers Hamas.
According to Arabic press reports, 68 Palestinian and Jordanian citizens faced the "special terrorism court" in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, beginning on Sunday.
Families of the accused said their relatives were being prosecuted without legal representation. The detainees were arrested by Saudi secret police in April of last year.
Among those arrested was Mohammed al-Khudari, 81, a long time Palestinian resident of Saudi Arabia and a retired physician suffering from colon cancer, according to his family who spoke by phone from Gaza.
Al-Khadari's son, Hani - an IT professor at a Saudi university with no apparent political activities - was also detained.
Abdul Majed, Mohammed al-Khudari's brother, told Al Jazeera both relatives were placed in solitary confinement for seven months. He said the next court date would be May 5.
"The arrests of these two Palestinian nationals is part of a wider crackdown by the Saudi Arabian authorities on Palestinians residing in Saudi Arabia with a perceived link to Hamas de facto authorities," according to a statement by Amnesty International.
"Since February 2019, the Saudi authorities have detained approximately 60 Palestinians visiting or residing in Saudi Arabia, including students, academics, and businessmen."
Pivot to Israel
Al-Khudari was Hamas official representative in the kingdom for decades before the recent change in Saudi leadership, which saw the historically pro-Palestinian government become closer to Israel.
Hamas is generally viewed in the Arab world as a legitimate resistance movement against the Israeli occupation of Palestinians lands.
According to regional analysts, the Saudi shift towards Israel could be understood within the framework of the changing of the guard within the kingdom's leadership.
The 84-year-old King Salman's ascension to the throne in 2015 ushered in the rise of his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), 34, to power.
MBS's quid pro quo
According to Professor Mahjoob Zweiri, MBS is eager to take control of the kingdom and is in dire need of foreign political support, particularly from the United States and Israel.
Zweiri, director of Gulf Studies Center at Qatar University, said he does not see any reason why Saudi Arabia would hold Palestinians for supporting Hamas.
Hamas issued a statement on Monday denouncing the arrests saying it was closely following the "false accusations" and the "unjust trial" of Palestinians in Saudi Arabia.
"The Palestinians arrested by the Saudi state security police have committed no crime other than having the honour of defending Jerusalem and Al Aqsa Mosque," the statement said.
Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk told Al Jazeera in a previous interview his organisation had tried mediation efforts with the Saudi government for months in order to free the detainees, but to no avail.
Zweiri said MBS's effort to secure the Saudi throne led him to back US President Donald Trump's Middle East plan.
The plan supports the Israeli goals of annexing large sections of the occupied West Bank and legitimises its illegal Jewish settlements.
The Trump administration recognised occupied Jerusalem as Israel's "capital" - an illegal move under international law and a violation of 1993 Palestinian-Israeli Oslo agreements.Abdullah Abu Rahma has been arrested by Israeli soldiers eight times in the last 15 years, spending weeks or months in prison and paying tens of thousands of dollars in fines for organizing protests.
He’s among a growing number of Palestinians who have embraced non-violent means of protesting Israel’s military rule and expanding settlements, and who are increasingly finding those avenues of dissent blocked.
More than 50 years after occupying the West Bank, Israel is still systematically denying Palestinians civil rights, including the right to gather, Human Rights Watch said in a report released last month.
Israel has also stepped up its campaign against the Palestinian-led international boycott movement, and the US and other countries have adopted legislation to suppress it.
Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director for Human Rights Watch, said Israel has “all but declared Palestinian opposition to the systematic discrimination they face illegitimate.”
Shakir himself was deported from Israel in November over his alleged support for the boycott movement.
If it succeeds in banning forms of peaceful advocacy, he says, Israel will have “effectively left Palestinians no choice but submission to a regime of systematic repression, or violence.”
For decades, the Palestinians were branded terrorists because of their armed struggle against Israel. At the height of the Second Intifada, the violent uprising in the early 2000s, and for years afterward, observers wondered why there was no “Palestinian Gandhi.”
One candidate for such a title might be Abu Rahma, who for several years organized weekly protests in the West Bank village of Bilin.
Abu Rahma said he never threw stones and told others not to do so, partly out of concern they would hurt other protesters.
That didn’t keep him from being arrested.
Over the years he was charged with entering a closed military zone — referring to land outside the village — and hindering the work of soldiers, who were overseeing the construction of the fence.
“I don’t go to them, they come to us,” he said.
In 2009 he was charged with stockpiling weapons after he collected spent tear gas canisters fired by Israeli soldiers and put them on display. He later served a 16-month prison term after a military court convicted him of incitement and participation in illegal protests.
“There have been various, multiple charges of this kind, but not once have they accused me of striking a soldier or throwing a stone,” he said. In 2009, he was acquitted on the weapons possession charge and a charge of throwing stones.
Issa Amro, another prominent activist who has organized protests against Israeli settlements in the West Bank city of Hebron, faces 16 charges, including calling for disobedience and disrupting Israeli life — the lives of settlers.
He says he has been detained on 10 occasions this year alone, usually after being beaten by settlers.
“The soldiers never did anything to stop the attackers, but they arrested me every time a settler said I attacked him,” he said. As a Palestinian, he is governed by Israeli military law, while the Jewish settlers in Hebron enjoy full rights as Israeli citizens.
“Israeli authorities ban any political expression in the Palestinian territories,” Amro said.
“They want us basically to accept the occupation, the discrimination, the land grab, the restrictions, and not to speak up against it.”
Human Rights Watch said Israel relies on sweeping military orders, many of which date back to the 1967 Mideast war, when it seized the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza, territories the Palestinians want for their future state.
Civilians can be jailed for up to 10 years for attending political gatherings of more than 10 people or for displaying flags or political symbols without army approval, Human Rights Watch said. Military orders ban 411 organizations, including every major political movement, it added.
“After 52 years, Israel’s sweeping restrictions of the basic rights of Palestinians can no longer be justified by the exigencies of military occupation,” Shakir said.
“Palestinians are entitled at minimum to the same rights Israel provides its own citizens.”
In response to questions about the Human Rights Watch report and the restrictions on protests, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused the Palestinian leadership of seeking to “attack Israel in the international arena” rather than trying to end the conflict through negotiations.
Peace talks broke down after Netanyahu was elected in 2009. In September, he vowed to annex large parts of the West Bank, a move that would almost certainly extinguish any remaining hope of creating a Palestinian state.
The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Islamic militant group Hamas, which rules Gaza, have also cracked down on dissent in recent years. The PA has detained hundreds of people, including Amro, who was jailed for a week in 2017 over a Facebook post. Hamas violently dispersed protests last March, arresting dozens of people.
In addition to protesting, many Palestinians have also rallied behind the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, a nonviolent campaign that claims to be modeled on the struggle against South African Apartheid.
The campaign has sparked a major backlash by Israeli authorities, who say its true aim is to delegitimize the state and eventually wipe it off the map.
BDS endorses the Palestinian claim of a right of return for the descendants of refugees who fled or were driven out of Israel in the 1948 war that attended its creation. If fully realized, that would spell the end of Israel as a Jewish-majority state. Critics have also seized on statements from prominent BDS supporters to brand it as anti-Semitic, something organizers vehemently deny.
A 2017 law bars entry to foreigners who have called for economic boycotts of Israel or its settlements. Israel invoked the law when it deported Shakir and when it refused entry to US congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib earlier this year.
In May, German lawmakers passed a resolution that denounced the boycott movement and described its methods as anti-Semitic. The US House of Representatives passed a resolution opposing the boycott movement in July.
At least 25 US states have enacted laws aimed at suppressing the BDS movement, including Texas, which passed a law forcing state contractors to sign a pledge that they do not support the campaign. A federal judge blocked enforcement of the law in April, saying boycotts are a form of protected free speech.
Gerald Steinberg, who heads a pro-Israel group called NGO Monitor that campaigns against BDS, said its “demonization paints Israelis as blood-thirsty war criminals, land-thieves and child killers.”
“These accusations contribute to or are used to justify attacks against students and speakers on university campuses, harassment in other venues and in some cases, violent terror,” he said.
Abu Rahma and other activists reject such characterizations, saying their struggle is not against Israelis but against the occupation.
“I see how the occupation is an obstacle to everything,” he said. “The path that I am on, I have to continue. I have to struggle. It’s not easy.”
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