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Photo: Palestinian pharmacist displays empty shelfs in Um al Fahm.
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from MEM (MiddleEast Monitor)

{Adalah reports that] A number of Arab citizens in Israel said that Israeli businesses, such as the electricity and communication companies, have refused to provide services in Arab towns in Israel in the wake of the protests that these areas have witnessed in recent days.

Arabs 48 news website reported that Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, sent an urgent appeal on Monday after the Israeli Ministry of Health closed an important medical clinic in Umm Al-Fahm and a number of companies, including the electricity company, the telecommunication company Bezeq and Orange for mobile services, decided to close shop in the Arab areas and prevented their teams and staff from providing services to Arabs in the cities and villages more generally.

The Ministry of Health in Al-Khdeira announced on Sunday that it had closed a clinic in Umm Al-Fahm specialising in the health of newborn babies and pregnant mothers.

Earlier, the telecommunication company Bezeq ordered its teams and staff not to enter Arab villages, including those villages that did not witness any confrontations or protests. Adalah received several complaints about other companies adopting similar behaviours, such as Orange for mobile communications and the electricity company, which has refused to provide services to Arabs in Nazareth and Wadi Ara.

According to Arabs 48, Adalah's lawyer Sawsan Zahar sent urgent messages to the Minister of Communications, the Minister of Infrastructure, the Minister of Heath, the Legal Adviser to the Government and the general managers of the companies in question. Zahar stated in her message that the decision to halt services in Arab areas is considered "an illegal punitive step that does not take Arab citizens' rights into consideration."

Zahar also described the decision as "completely contradictory to the law on medical rights, the law that bans discrimination in services and products and the law against discrimination in access to public areas". Zahar added that such decisions not only harm consumers, who paid for the services that they are now being deprived of, but also violate "the dignity of Arab citizens who are denied services on a nationalist basis only".

These decisions "constitute a collective punishment of Arab citizens for exercising their right to protest," she said.