Ghanem said the move would signal to Palestinian citizens that the "door is closed to them when it comes to participating in the democratic process."
He added: "As well as being politically dangerous, this will also be seen as an assault on Islamic belief. The movement funds and organizes student associations that teach the Koran. They will now be treated as illegal."
Ghanem said nothing about the Islamic Movement had changed in the past decade. "The only thing that changed is the political extremism of Netanyahu and his government."
Draconian measureAdalah, a legal group for Palestinians in Israel, said the order from the defence minister, Moshe Yaalon, was based on emergency regulations from the British Mandate period.
The decision threatens with arrest and imprisonment anyone who continues to be involved with the organization or offers it services.
Adalah called it "an aggressive, draconian measure" that would "suppress a political movement that represents a large part of the Palestinian public in Israel."
Salah denounced the ban, saying his movement would continue to defend Jerusalem and the al-Aqsa mosque compound in the Old City from what he termed Israeli threats.
For more than a decade Salah has clashed with Israeli officials by leading a campaign under the slogan "Al-Aqsa is in danger," warning that Israel is seeking to erode Islamic sovereignty over the mosque area.
In September the government banned the Murabitoun, Muslim students organized by the Islamic Movement in the al-Aqsa compound. They had regularly clashed with Jewish extremists allowed into the area in ever-increasing numbers by the Israeli authorities.
Netanyahu and other ministers have accused Salah of incitement and blamed him for the wave of Palestinian protests and so-called "lone-wolf" attacks, many of them stabbings, of the past few weeks.
Salah said: "I will take every possible legitimate step, in Israel and internationally, to remove the measures taken against the movement."
Welfare services threatenedThe Islamic Movement was founded in the 1970s as both a political party and a provider of religious and welfare services. It split into two factions in the mid-1990s, with Salah's so-called northern group refusing to participate in parliamentary elections.
The organization runs kindergartens, health clinics, mosques, a newspaper and a sports league.
It is also a key member of the Follow-Up Committee, the Palestinian minority's only representative national body. Mohammed Barakeh, the committee's head, said the Islamic Movement would continue to participate in defiance of the ban.
Only a fortnight ago, the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz reported that a year-long investigation by Israel's domestic intelligence service, the Shin Bet, had been unable to find security grounds for closing the organization.
Two unnamed government ministers told the paper that Yoram Cohen, head of the Shin Bet, had told the security cabinet he objected to any move to criminalize the movement's more than 10,000 members. It would do "more harm than good," he reportedly told them.
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