ISRAEL’S Communist Party is calling for mass mobilisation for May Day marches to defy growing police repression in the country.

The Communist Party of Israel (CPI) said demonstrations should “rise against the occupation, against fascism, against class oppression and against exploitation” given Israel’s far-right government’s bid to weaken the judiciary and accelerate the colonisation of Palestine.

The party appealed for international solidarity after police raided its Nazareth headquarters on Wednesday, arresting the city’s party secretary and illegally seizing flags.

“A large force of Israeli police and its gendarmerie, the ‘Israel Border Police,’ raided the headquarters ... demanding we take down the Palestinian flag,” the party said in a statement.

The CPI, which sits in the Knesset as part of the Hadash coalition, is the only party in Israel with both Jewish and Arab members.

“Comrades of Nazareth confronted the police forces and refused them access to the building. The police did not possess any warrant, and called for back-up, climbed walls, removed the Palestinian flag and the red flags, and confiscated them, all while arresting the secretary,” the party said.

Following complaints from the party leadership the police returned the flags, which were raised again over the building.

But the CPI warned that the “outrageous provocation and intimidation” is aimed at “suppressing and attacking political freedoms in implementation of the orders of the settler [National Security Minister] Itamar Ben-Gvir.”

The CPI says government plans to form a national guard organisation under Mr Ben-Gvir — which even former Israeli prime minister Benny Gantz says will be a “private army” — would amount to a “fascist militia” for the suppression of democracy activists and terrorising Israeli Arabs.

The weekend was expected to see more mass demonstrations against the Benjamin Netanyahu government’s judicial reforms, which would allow the Knesset to overturn Supreme Court rulings.

But a huge far-right demonstration on Thursday night — estimated by organisers at half a million in size, while police put the figure at 200,000 — called on ministers not to back down on the legislation, which has been paused because of widespread opposition.

“We will not give up,” Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a self-described “fascist homophobe,” told crowds who trampled on portraits of Israel’s Supreme Court president.