Israeli Activist Jailed for Meeting Arafat : 1st Sentencing Under Law Barring Contacts With Terror Groups

A court in Israel on Tuesday sentenced well-known peace activist Abie Nathan to six months in jail for meeting with PLO leader Yasser Arafat on grounds that the contacts undermine Israel’s fight against terrorism.

Nathan, a radio broadcaster, will be the first Israeli to be jailed under a controversial 1986 anti-terrorist law that forbids meetings between Israelis and groups linked to terrorism. Israeli civil rights activists claim that the law, rather than a security measure, is designed only to suppress acceptance of the Palestine Liberation Organization as a partner in peace talks. The maximum punishment for breaking the law is three years in jail.

“I will not stop fighting this law despite everything,” Nathan said in a courtroom near Tel Aviv.

Contacts between Palestinian activists and Israeli citizens have increased markedly since the beginning of the Arab uprising against Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

During the 22 months of the intifada , as the uprising is called in Arabic, many contacts have taken place inside Israel with Arab participants from the West Bank and Gaza who keep their links with the PLO under wraps. There have been numerous well-publicized meetings between Israelis and PLO officials abroad. Nathan met with Arafat last year in Tunisia and France.

Charges against 14 other Israelis who have held talks with PLO officials are in various stages of prosecution. Dozens of others have ignored the law without being brought to court.

Ari Fass, the judge in the case, concluded that much of the Israeli public views the law as undemocratic but that it must be upheld.

“Ideological reasons, including the conviction that you are saving lives, cannot justify the breaking of a law, especially for a man like Abie Nathan, whose words have great public impact in Israel and abroad,” the judge ruled.

Nathan, 62, replied: “We have our courts. The court decided I should spend six months in prison. I accept it, and I intend to go to prison without complaining. I knew I was violating a law, and I will always violate this law, because I think it is an obstacle to peace.”

Asked on government radio if he would meet with Arafat again, he responded, “If anyone thinks that six months in prison would keep me away from doing what I think is right and talking with the enemy, they have another think coming.”

Nathan refused an offer to serve out his sentence doing community service on the grounds that such work should not be done under coercion.

Nathan has long been a flamboyant figure among Israeli doves. In 1968, he was jailed for 40 days after piloting an aircraft to Egypt to deliver peace petitions signed by 100,000 Israelis. At the time, it was illegal for Israelis to enter Arab countries.

Nathan runs the Voice of Peace, a floating offshore radio station that is the country’s sole domestic alternative to government and army broadcasts.

The Citizens Rights Movement, a minor faction in Israel’s Parliament, vowed to try to overturn the law under which Nathan was convicted.

“The whole idea of this law is political. It has nothing to do with fighting terrorism,” said Dedi Zucker, a member of the party. “We are living with the past. It is time to cope with reality.”

The willingness of Israeli peace activists to break the ice with the PLO stems from the apparent moderation in the Palestinian group’s stand. In a series of concessions last year, Arafat renounced the use of terrorism and implicitly recognized Israel’s right to exist.

The Israeli government has gone to great lengths to reduce the impact of Arafat’s peace offensive on the Israeli public as well as the Arab population in the rebellious West Bank and Gaza Strip. Government-controlled television has censored Arafat’s speeches, and at one point, the military rulers of the occupied territories cut electricity to Arab homes to keep the PLO leader from being viewed on television news broadcast from Jordan and Egypt.