Channel 13 reported that the arrest followed complaints filed in recent months, stemming from a speech Zoabi delivered at a pro-Palestinian conference held in Vienna in 2024. The news outlet added that "police arrived at her home in Nazareth and then took her to the police station."
In a statement, Israeli police claimed that Zoabi's statements "raise suspicion of committing crimes related to sympathy with a terrorist organization and incitement to terrorist acts," vowing to take action "against anyone who praises or sympathizes with terrorist organizations or enemy states during wartime."
According to Channel 12, Zoabi stated at the Palestine Conference in Vienna that "it was not Hamas that resisted, but the Palestinian people," and that "it is impossible to separate Hamas from the Palestinian people... and those who entered on October 7 did not enter Israeli borders, but rather their occupied land."
For his part, Hassan Jabrin, director of Adalah and Zoabi's defense attorney, considered her arrest "an illegal step," adding that "the standard procedure in such cases is a regular summons for interrogation, not a middle-of-the-night detention."
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He described the arrest as "a political stunt to serve National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who attempts to exploit such cases to generate media headlines at the expense of basic rights."
He added, "The fact that the matter was leaked to the media before the investigation itself began proves that it was a political show," and that "Hanin Zoabi would have attended of her own free will after an official summons, without any unnecessary fanfare or police raiding her home at 6:00 a.m.."
Zoabi, a former member of the Knesset from 2009 to 2019, representing the National Democratic Assembly party, is known for her opposition to Israel's racist policies toward Palestinians inside Israel and its oppressive policies toward Palestinians in the territories occupied in 1967.
Her arrest comes as Israel, with US support, has been waging a war of extermination in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, and a bloody and destructive military aggression in the West Bank.
