There are plenty of kids out there who are scared of clowns and puppets. There is something about characters that sound like people but look like something else that scares the daylights out of them. The professional term for this phenomenon is pediophobia. The vast majority of children manage to overcome this anxiety as they grow up. Apparently, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, the Israeli minister of internal security, is not one of them. He still seems to be terrified of puppets.

A week ago, on June 21, Aharonovitch ordered the closure of the Hakawati Theater in east Jerusalem, where a puppet theater festival was slated to take place. According to the closure order, the festival is being held by or sponsored by the Palestinian Authority, and Israeli law states, “The Palestinian Authority (or any person acting on its behalf or under its aegis or who uses its name) will not act or operate any representation or hold any gatherings or any other activity within the boundaries of the State of Israel unless it has received authorization to do so by the government or the body authorized to grant such permission … The Minister of Internal Security may issue an ordinance to prevent such gatherings or activities from being held insofar as they have not received official authorization as required by law.” This clause served as the basis for the theater’s closure. The festival was cancelled. The curtain dropped.

Last week, following the closure order, the Israeli police summoned the theater’s director Mohamed Halayiqa for interrogation by Shin Bet. Halayiqa denied allegations that the Palestinian Authority was behind the festival and later said that during the course of his interrogation, no one offered any evidence that it had been. According to him, the festival, which is now in its nineteenth season, features plays by Arab citizens of Israel and by theater groups from Norway, France and Turkey. It is funded by contributions from Palestinian businesspeople, the Palestinian Cultural Foundation, which is, in turn, funded by the nations of Europe.

The children of east Jerusalem are among the poorest served by Israel. The state does not invest in east Jerusalem, and certainly not in cultural activities. According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, some 360,000 Palestinians live in east Jerusalem, with 78 percent of them — and 84 percent of the children — living below the poverty line. The festival is therefore one of the few cultural anchors of these children. For them, it opens a door to a whole new world and to a life that they are not used to seeing. It is a one-time opportunity for them to be exposed to cultural enrichment and the basic pleasures to which children in Israel are regularly exposed.