National Union MK Michael Ben-Ari defied a police ban on a protest he organized for Nazareth on Sunday, and entered the Arab city of 80,000 residents on his own for a short while.

Ben-Ari and his supporters had originally planned on entering the city and staging a protest outside the home of Knesset Member Haneen Zoabi, who recently released a series of radical anti-Israel statements.

"I am here to tell Haneen Zoabi to go... the parliament in Qatar. Go join the parliament in Syria," Ben-Ari told reporters outside Nazareth.

But Police Commissioner Insp.-Gen. Yochanan Danino canceled the permit given to the protest, due to the assessment that the security situation in the south had rendered such an event too likely to end in rioting.

Ben-Ari took advantage of his parliamentary immunity to enter the city briefly, walking down a street with an Israeli flag accompanied by police. He was met by dozens of protesters from the Balad political party waving Palestinian flags, who were kept back by police.

Ben-Ari's supporters waited outside of Nazareth.

Ben-Ari later described the police's decision as a "disgrace," telling Ma'ariv that "the state has surrendered to Arab in Gaza and now its surrendering to Arabs in Nazareth." He vowed to return and hold a protest in the city.

Zoabi joined the protesters, and said she was pleased that "they didn't let fascism enter the city."

"He didn't get to my house," Zoabi said of Ben-Ari, "but racists roam free in Israel."