Former MK starts prison sentence for Syria visit

Former Knesset member Said Nafa began a year-long prison sentence Thursday after being convicted of illegally traveling to Syria.

Leaders of the controversial Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, as well as current members of Knesset from the Joint (Arab) List, accompanied Nafa as he arrived at the Gilboa Prison with his family.

In April 2014, the Nazareth District Court convicted the Druze lawyer of leading 282 Druze clerics on a trip to Syria in September 2007, contravening an Israeli law that prohibits visits to enemy states.

During that trip, Nafa met briefly with Talal Naji, the deputy head of a registered terror group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command, the second felony of which he was convicted. An alleged attempt by Nafa to meet with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, who was based in Damascus at the time, failed.

The verdict against the Israeli legislator was upheld by the Supreme Court in August.

Knesset Member Abdullah Abu Maaruf posted photos from outside the prison with an accompanying message in Arabic calling the sentencing apparatus “the apartheid state.”

“While Nafa enters prison, the Druze will continue to fight the Israeli policy of occupation and repression of freedoms,” he wrote.

Druze communities are scattered over the Israeli Golan Heights and Galilee, Lebanon, and Syria. Israeli Druze are occasionally able to travel to neighboring countries to visit family and other communities, who are separated by international boundaries.

Nafa, a resident of Beit Jann on the Golan who served in the Knesset from 2007-2013, has advocated that Israel’s Druze population abandon its traditional loyalty to Israel, adopt a Palestinian and pan-Arab identity, and stop performing Israel Defense Forces service alongside Israeli Jews.

Nafa was told by the Interior Ministry that he would not be given permission for the Syria trip. However, he proceeded with his travel arrangements anyway, with the help of then-MK Azmi Bishara, now a fugitive from Israeli law accused of passing sensitive information to Syria. Nafa and his entourage reached Syria after coordinating with the Syrian Embassy in Jordan, and he later met with Naji.

Nafa was stripped of his parliamentary immunity in 2010 by a Knesset committee.

In late August, three members of Balad, Nafa’s former party, met with Bishara in Qatar, prompting a Knesset Ethics Committee investigation and calls for Balad to be outlawed. The trip was allegedly funded by Bishara.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.