Palestinian Ex-MK To Begin Jail Term Over Syria Visit

8f601ef01dee4d6dad727cb16b23aa85_18

Said Nafaa, a former Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament, will on Sunday begin serving a one-year jail sentence for traveling to “an enemy state”, after a second appeal of his case to the Israeli Supreme Court was rejected this month.  “Nafaa will begin his prison sentence on November 1,” said Amjad Iraqi, a spokesperson for Adalah – The Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. The group’s initial appeal of the Nafaa case was rejected in August, Iraqi told Al Jazeera:

Nafaa, a Druze who served in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, from 2007 until 2013, was charged last year with travelling to an “enemy state” after a trip to Syria in 2007 to visit fellow Druze, along with about 200 other people. He was consequently stripped of his parliamentary immunity in 2010. Critics allege Nafaa’s jail sentence is a politically motivated attempt by Israel to isolate Palestinians in Israel from Arabs living in other countries.

Nafaa, who is from Beit Jann in northern Israel, has encouraged Israel’s Druze population to abandon its traditional loyalty to the state of Israel, to adopt a Palestinian and pan-Arab identity, and refuse mandatory military service in the Israeli military.

Adalah said the original ruling in late August was a blatant example of politics trumping the rule of law. “The court ignored that the charges against Nafaa were in effect for activity within the context of a Member of Knesset’s (MK) parliamentary immunity, who, according to the law, is permitted to leave and enter the country freely,” the group stated in a news release.