Knesset parties gang up to expel Palestinian MK
Palestinian MKs Basel Ghattas, Haneen Zoabi and Jamal Zakalka from the Joint List’s Balad faction
Why Palestinian prisoners have the right to cell phones
By David Cronin, Electronic Intifada
January 10, 2017
Benjamin Netanyahu claimed not so long ago that Palestinian citizens of Israel have “equal rights and equal duties.” The markedly different way that he and a Palestinian lawmaker have been treated over the past few weeks exposes how dishonest that claim was.
Despite being under investigation for alleged corruption, Netanyahu has been able to continue serving as Israel’s prime minister. A bill aimed at protecting him from further probes has even been drafted by a representative of Likud, the largest government party.
Like Netanyahu, Basel Ghattas is a member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. Unlike Netanyahu, he has already been punished for accusations made against him.
The accusation that Ghattas smuggled cell phones to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails has led to his being suspended from the Knesset for six months.
A push is now underway to permanently remove Ghattas from the parliament. Zeev Elkin, a government minister, has requested that Knesset members sign an appeal to have Ghattas expelled.
Under a law which entered into force during 2016, elected representatives may be kicked out of the Knesset if a vote is approved by 90 of its members. Adalah, a group representing Palestinians in Israel, has complained that the law enables members of the Knesset to club together so they can conduct “field-style court martials” against political opponents.
Ghattas has argued that Netanyahu and other senior figures in the Israeli government “want a photo of an Arab MK [member of Knesset] in handcuffs.”
Persecuted
The allegations that have been made in public against Ghattas indicate that he is being persecuted simply because he tried to assist Palestinian prisoners.
According to Israeli press reports, he delivered a total of 12 cell phones to Basel Bizra, who is currently being held in Ketziot, a jail in the Naqab (Negev) region.
Bizra is a member of Fatah, one of the largest Palestinian parties, and has previously been a spokesperson for Fatah prisoners.
Cell phones cannot be considered weapons or as dangerous items. The idea that bringing modern communications to people locked away by an apartheid state could be a serious crime – or anything more than an administrative offense – is risible.
The United Nations has explicitly recognized that prisoners have the right to communicate with the outside world. If Ghattas did indeed smuggle cell phones to prisoners, then he was arguably defending their basic rights.
Yet Israel’s political hierarchy has rushed to depict Ghattas as a felon. First, a committee in the Knesset voted to strip him of his immunity from prosecution last month. That paved the way for his arrest on 22 December.
Avigdor Lieberman, the defence minister, pounced on the arrest to attack the Joint List, the grouping of parties to which Ghattas belongs.
“This is just one more proof that the Joint List is in fact the joint list of spies and traitors,” Lieberman wrote on Facebook.
Danger to public?
Last week, the Israeli government formally indicted Ghattas. The charges against him include deceit and breach of trust by a public servant and aggravated fraud.
The Israeli state has also appealed against a recent court ruling that Ghattas may be released from house arrest. According to Israeli prosecutors, there is a suspicion Ghattas could “endanger public safety.”
The treatment of Ghattas is part of a series of attempts to disenfranchise Palestinian citizens of Israel.
The Joint List against which Lieberman has thundered was actually established in response to such disenfranchisement.
In 2014, the Knesset raised the electoral threshold required for a party to win representation. The new criteria forced a union among Palestinian-led parties, galvanizing Palestinian voters and leading the Joint List to win the third largest share of seats in the Knesset in the 2015 general election.
Ghattas is not the first Palestinian lawmaker to be suspended from the Knesset. In 2014, Haneen Zoabi was banned for six months for alleged “incitement.”
The hierarchy decided to punish her over remarks she made in a radio interview about the kidnapping of three Israeli youths, who were later found dead. Zoabi made clear that she disapproved of the kidnapping but declined to describe it as “terrorism.”
While Palestinian lawmakers can be chastised simply for expressing their views, Jewish Israeli politicians may defend serious human rights abuses without fear of censure.
A day before Israel indicted Ghattas last week, Benjamin Netanyahu supported calls for the pardoning of an Israeli soldier who shot dead an injured Palestinian.
That Netanyahu suffered no consequences underscores the absurdity of his professed commitment to equal rights.
Additional research by Charlotte Silver.
Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog leads a faction meeting in the Knesset, November 07, 2016. Photo by Miriam Alster/FLASH90
By allowing its lawmakers to raise their hands in favour of the law and bring about Basel Ghattas’ ouster, the faction has brought upon itself a shame that will never be forgotten.
Editorial, Haaretz
January 18, 2017
One of the most shameful laws the Knesset has ever enacted is now about to be implemented: For the first time in Israel’s history, there’s a real possibility that a sitting Knesset member will be ousted by a vote of his fellow legislators.
Seventy MKs have already signed on in support of expelling their colleague Basel Ghattas (Joint List) after he was charged with smuggling cell phones to imprisoned terrorists. If Ghattas is ousted, the decision will have been made possible by the votes of members of the Zionist Union faction, which decided on Monday to allow its MKs to vote in favour of his expulsion if they so choose.
The ouster law, which was enacted last summer, states that the Knesset can expel an MK for incitement to racism or support for armed struggle against Israel. Thus, based on the wording of the law itself, it shouldn’t apply to Ghattas: He hasn’t yet been convicted, and it’s doubtful that the charges against him meet the criteria set in the law.
A cynical Yair Lapid – front, centre – with his shameless 18 puppets, the other Yesh Atid MKs. Photo by Yehoshua Yosef/Flash90
It’s no surprise that the right-wing parties support Ghattas’ expulsion. They enacted the law precisely for this purpose: to eject Arab legislators from the Knesset. Nor should the Yesh Atid party’s support for his ouster surprise anyone: Party chairman Yair Lapid has been paving his political ascent with base incitement against Arabs for a long time now, since this is well known as the most effective weapon for gathering votes in Israel.
When it comes to incitement, Lapid doesn’t fall one whit short of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the greatest of anti-Arab inciters. And Lapid’s party colleagues have long since lost both their shame and their independence; they blindly, automatically obey their leader’s cynical decisions. Some of them know quite well how dangerous the ouster law is, and how contemptible it is to expel a Knesset member who hasn’t yet been convicted in court, but they have fallen silent out of fear of their leader.
Now, Zionist Union is following in Yesh Atid’s footsteps. And even from Zionist Union, such wretched behaviour was hard to foresee. Not even chairman Isaac Herzog’s denunciation of the law after it passed as “an ugly stain on the face of this government of hate” deterred him from announcing Monday that he approves of the stain, in the form of Ghattas’ ouster. And a few other MKs from his faction hastened to announce that they, too, would vote for the expulsion.
This ugly stain is now defacing Zionist Union in its entirety. By allowing its MKs to raise their hands in favour of the law and bring about Ghattas’ ouster – which requires the support of 90 of the Knesset’s 120 MKs – the faction has brought upon itself a shame that will never be forgotten. This isn’t the first time the faction has been dragged after the radical right and the populist centre; it isn’t the first time it has betrayed its trust as the largest opposition party; and it isn’t the first time we’ve been given proof that Zionist Union under Herzog’s leadership has completely lost its way.