Asaf Ronel of Haaretz in Jaffa was on C4 News this evening, this is the jist of the conversation, starts around 10 minutes in:
Iāve never been in a situation like this in my life.
We are seeing organised attacks by the Israeli police, joining hands with the far right mob.When the police come, they only come to stop Palestinians. The Palestinians are organising to defend themselves on the streets of Jaffa.
The police are using excessive force and measures.
Q: When the President of Israel said there was a possibility of civil war in Israel was he being too alarmist?
I think that from what I experience here in Jaffa, the feeling of disillusionment with Jewish society is as large as at the start of the second Intifada 20 years ago, if not even worse.
Q: So youāre blaming right wing Israeli gangs and youāre saying the police is not just not intervening but often complicit in this?
Itās more than that.
When the right wing mob comes the police is not stopping them and when they are stopping them they are letting them go a few minutes afterwards.
What the police is doing on the streets of Jaffa, without the need for any far right mob, is they are abusing the population, the entire Palestinian population, with means that are maybe more common in the West Bank, but which I donāt think I have ever seen here.
They are stopping any Palestinian on a scooter or a bike, they are getting tired from throwing the keys of scooters into the bushes in the middle of the night, or breaking the scooters.
Any Palestinian who says one wrong word or even looks the wrong way at police is getting beaten up by police, they are getting rubber bullets to the chest, on a daily basis, you can see teenagers and they are walking around Jaffa comparing the wounds they have to their bodies.