“If despotism were a man, he would say: I am evil; my father is injustice, my mother is abuse, and my homeland is ruin.”
— ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi, The Nature of Despotism
The arrest of lawyer Mohannad Karajah marks yet another episode in the escalating restriction of public freedoms under the Palestinian Authority.
Karajah, director of the Lawyers for Justice group, has long been known for his unwavering defense of political detainees and for his principled commitment to cases concerning freedom of expression. His name became particularly linked to his persistent follow-up of the Nizar Banat case, which he continued to attend and advocate despite repeated delays of court hearings over the years.
Karajah had previously faced multiple smear campaigns and threats because of his human rights work and outspoken criticism of abuses. Yet his most recent arrest was based on a fabricated social media post falsely attributed to him through a fake account that appeared to support executions in Gaza. Despite the clearly falsified nature of the post, he was referred to the public prosecution and charged with “inciting sectarian strife” and “spreading information that causes public fear,” under provisions of the 1960 Penal Code and the 2018 Cybercrime Law.
The Lawyers for Justice group issued an official statement confirming that the detention was part of a “coordinated campaign of incitement and defamation” targeting both Karajah and the organization. The statement noted that prosecutors had confiscated his phone and ID card and demanded access to his social media passwords. The charges, the group said, were baseless and built on fabricated digital evidence already publicly debunked. It further announced that Karajah had begun an open-ended hunger strike in protest, calling on human rights organizations and diplomatic missions to follow the case and ensure protection for human rights defenders.
In a concurrent statement, the Coalition of the Bar for All expressed grave concern over the arrest, describing it as “a dangerous precedent” and calling for Karajah’s immediate release and a transparent investigation into the circumstances of his detention. The coalition also urged the Bar Association to suspend court proceedings in protest at the repeated assaults on lawyers and defenders of civil liberties. The convergence of the legal and human-rights positions reveals a rare consensus that the arrest constitutes an arbitrary measure within a broader policy of silencing independent voices.
Days before his arrest, Karajah posted a public statement noting that the Palestinian Bar Association and other bodies had informed him of a summons order issued by the security services, to be executed upon his return from travel, following a campaign launched on 18 October 2025. He pointed out that fact-checking platforms such as Tahaqaq, Kashif, and Tayqan had verified that the posts attributed to him were fabricated.
Nevertheless, the targeting persisted — an act of premeditated political reprisal, not a legal procedure.
Reports from these same platforms confirmed that the posts on which the prosecution relied were entirely false, circulated within a digital campaign designed to damage his reputation. Security forces confiscated his phone and ID, shut down his social-media accounts, and postponed his interrogation without clarification. In response, a wave of popular solidarity spread online under the hashtag #WeAreAllMohannadKarajah, demanding his release and the end of his persecution.
Just days before his detention, Karajah recorded a video statement in which he revealed that official bodies had attempted to blackmail him, asking him to issue a condemnation of a particular political faction in exchange for halting the campaign against him.
This testimony shows that his arrest was part of a premeditated plan to silence independent voices under the guise of law.
Repression today is no longer confined to political arrests, as it once was. During the COVID-19 pandemic, its face changed — and its scope widened. It became more selective in choosing its targets, more sophisticated in its methods, and more ruthless in its purpose. No longer limited to political opposition, it extended to journalists, lawyers, and anyone who dared to speak. Under the official rhetoric of “public order and national security,” incitement, surveillance, and blackmail became normalized. Fear itself became a policy. Over time, the state of emergency ceased to be an exception and turned into a permanent system of governance, with the pandemic serving as a pretext to shut down public space and redraw the relationship between citizen and authority on the basis of submission.
Since 2020, the pattern has become unmistakable. The intimidation of writers and human rights advocates was not a series of isolated incidents but the beginning of a systemic descent. What began as warnings and smear campaigns evolved into open violence — culminating in the killing of Nizar Banat, a moment when the mask finally fell: a regime that no longer hides its face but trains fear as a civic virtue. Repression became the rhythm of everyday life; silence, the only surviving language.
These practices have now become normalized in the Palestinian scene — so familiar they scarcely provoke shock. Those who defend freedom are persecuted, while those involved in corruption or land deals with the occupation are shielded.
Impunity is no longer implicit; it is officially declared. One need only recall the case of the former head of the Crossings Authority, referred to retirement in October 2025 while abroad, despite documented investigations into antiquities smuggling and financial corruption.
Smuggling antiquities is no less dangerous than collaboration; both are violations of collective memory and of the sovereignty of history itself. Yet such crimes are treated administratively, not judicially — a continuation of the culture of impunity.
In this inverted order, justice and loyalty have become indistinguishable.
Silence is rewarded; speech is condemned. Those who cling to principle are excluded, while those who betray it are summoned and protected.
In such a world, silence becomes a survival skill, and demanding justice becomes a punishable offense.
As ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi wrote more than a century ago:
“It has been proven to me that the root of the disease is political despotism, and its remedy is constitutional consultation (shura).”
The arrest of Mohannad Karajah cannot be seen as an isolated incident or a mere misjudgment. It is a mirror of a deeper corruption eroding both the institutions of governance and the moral fabric of society.
It stands as a symbol of how justice itself has been transformed — from a legal system into a mechanism of political control, and how the notion of “treason” has shifted from a legal definition into a symbolic weapon to eliminate truth and those who seek it.
What the occupation cannot achieve through its own apparatus of coercion, the Authority now carries out with its own hands — without justification and without shame.
And so, the echo of Kawakibi still pursues us:
“The tyrant is God’s sword: He takes vengeance through him, and then takes vengeance upon him.”