To the UN a Humanitarian Hero, Israel Accuses Him of Funneling Money to Hamas

Mohammed El Halabi in court in Be’er Sheva, 2017.Eliyahu Hershkovitz

Next week, after the Jewish holidays end, the trial of Mohammed El Halabi will resume in Be’er Sheva District Court. It’s either/or: Either El Halabi is one of Israel’s greatest and most dangerous enemies ever, as the indictment against him indicates – or he’s the victim of a cynical, cruel propaganda system that is exploiting him to stop the influx of international humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. Either he diverted tens of millions of dollars and hundreds of tons of iron to Hamas for tunnel-digging projects, as Israel’s Shin Bet security service maintains, or he’s a “humanitarian hero,” as the United Nations designated him in 2014. Either he’s a long-time Hamas “plant” in World Vision, the huge global aid organization whose Gaza and other branches he headed, or he’s a person who has devoted his life to providing humanitarian aid to farmers, disabled children and cancer patients in the Strip.

After 52 days of interrogation by the Shin Bet ­– which included severe torture, according to his father, Khalil El Halabi – and more than three years in an Israeli prison, El Halabi, who used to crisscross the world, address parliaments and enter Israel itself frequently, will next Thursday be brought again from Ramon Prison in Mitzpeh Ramon to face a judicial tribunal headed by Be’er Sheva District Court deputy president Natan Zlotchover. El Halabi has been brought into the courtroom 127 times since his initial arrest in June 2016; his testimony went on for nearly a year and he denied all the charges against him.

According to his lawyer, Maher Hanna, from Nazareth, when his trial began, El Halabi was offered a plea bargain that included a confession of guilt and three years in prison, but he refused. He insisted he was completely innocent. Meanwhile, in Gaza, Khalil is devoting all his time to his son’s struggle. “My heart is broken,” he told me this week.

El Halabi’s story has been reported relatively widely in international media outlets but in Israel he is a sort of “Inmate X,” with very little published about the case.

Khalil El Halabi, 65, worked for UNRWA, the United Nations refugee agency, for 40 years as an education supervisor. This week he sent me his photograph together with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter at a 2010 conference in the Al-Mathaf Hotel in Gaza City. Mohammed, his second son, was born in 1978 in the Jabalya refugee camp, is married to Ulla and has five children; the youngest, 4-year-old Faris, knows his father only from behind bars.

In 2003, Mohammed obtained a master’s degree in civil engineering from the Islamic University of Gaza; he worked in the private sector and later in the UN’s development agency. In 2006 he joined the U.S.-based, Christian, World Vision organization, one of the world’s largest international aid groups, and in short order became its regional director, covering the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

In an interview published on the organization’s website in August 2014, El Halabi related what had drawn him to the field of humanitarian aid: “I was born in Jabalya UNRWA refugee camp in Gaza. It is the densest area in the Middle East and there I experienced the most critical times for Gaza people.” He added, “I met the children whose houses were totally demolished and lost at least one of their beloved people, yet they are singing for peace.”

El Halabi left the engineering profession after “seeing injured and killed children, and knowing my own children have been traumatized by the violence, [and I] decided to fully dedicate my life to helping people and children to restore their lives.”

At that time, World Vision was helping 1,500 children as part of the Child Friendly Spaces program he established in the Strip to protect youngsters in emergencies, along with 350 wounded children in hospitals. El Halabi and his staff also “helped 8,000 parents in psychological first-aid training, which significantly reduces the stress on their children during the war,” he said in the same interview. This was the period of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge.

Photographs from the past show a stocky, smiling young man visiting wheelchair-bound youngsters, disabled athletes and farmers in their Gaza greenhouses; Khalil says his son’s work also often took him abroad. Indeed, one of Mohammed’s last missions was to address the parliament in Canberra; Australia is an important donor to projects he managed. He also traveled extensively in the West Bank and East Jerusalem – with Israeli authorization, of course. On June 15, 2016, when returning from a meeting with his staff in Jerusalem, he was taken into custody at the Erez border crossing into Gaza. His family only learned about the arrest three days later.

Thus began the ordeal of Citizen H. This week marked his 40th month in detention, during which he has been transferred among a number of prisons. His family is permitted to visit him only once every two months, and only three relatives are allowed to come each time, including the children. They try to take little Faris as often as possible, so he will get to know his father. It’s a grueling 12-hour trip from Gaza for a mere half-hour visit conducted through an armor-plated window. As a result of the torture El Halabi endured – including sleep deprivation, being hung from the ceiling and beatings, his father says – his hearing is 40-percent impaired, which makes the phone conversations through the window during visits even more difficult.

Attorney Hanna, who visits him occasionally in prison, says his client is strong and determined, and that his spirit has not flagged. Mohammed himself always tells his father in visits that he is certain that justice will prevail.

El Halabi’s trial is being held partly in camera. On November 22, 2017, he was brought before the Supreme Court for a hearing on the repeated extension of his remands, because there had been so many of them. The revised indictment against him that had been filed early that year includes the following charges, some of which are very serious: contact with a foreign agent, membership in a terror organization, aiding the enemy in wartime, using property for the purposes of terrorism, passing information to the enemy, possession of arms and ammunition, and prohibited military training.

“The accused exploited his position and status in World Vision, a humanitarian aid organization, to advance the goals of Hamas,” the indictment states.

El Halabi has also been accused of diverting between hundreds and thousands of tons of iron, originally intended for agricultural purposes, to Hamas for construction of tunnels. He also allegedly “marked coordinates in Israel for operations by the Iz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades” – the Islamist organization’s military wing. Moreover, he is accused of transferring funds for the purchase of equipment for Hamas’ naval commandos, and even of giving the organization information about the security arrangements at the Erez crossing.

In a briefing for reporters after the indictment was filed, a Shin Bet official claimed El Halabi had transferred tens of millions of dollars to Hamas. A greenhouse project he had managed was allegedly intended to conceal excavation sites for tunnels; a rehabilitation program for fishermen was actually a cover for purchasing diving suits and motorboats for Hamas’ naval force; farmers he hired were lookouts for Hamas. He even allegedly transferred thousands of food parcels to Hamas activists and their families. According to the charge sheet, El Halabi was recruited by Hamas as early as 2004 to “infiltrate” World Vision.