Headed to prison for Syria visit, ex-lawmaker vows to fight travel ban

A week before he was set to begin serving a year in prison for visiting an enemy state and meeting with a foreign agent in 2007, former Balad party Knesset member Said Nafa was defiant.

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 he was convicted of. 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 last month.

“I am going to prison based on a draconian, political ruling,” Nafa told The Times of Israel Wednesday in a telephone conversation from his home in Beit Jann, a Druze village on Mount Meron, in northern Israel. “Knowing that I was sentenced for a lofty principle leaves me, more or less, calm.”

Nafa belongs to a minority within his community that opposes the historical political pact forged by the Druze with the Zionist movement some 70 years ago. An outspoken Arab nationalist, he battles the conscription of Druze to the Israeli army, and disdains Druze politicians who “sold out” to Israel’s Jewish mainstream in return for political favor.

Since the year 2000, Nafa has facilitated family visits for some 10,000 Arab Israelis to Syria, including 1,000 Druze, as part of an initiative he calls “renewing the ties.” He said that while Israel allows Muslim Arabs to go on pilgrimage to the enemy state of Saudi Arabia, and Christian Arabs to visit various hostile countries, the Druze, numbering 130,000 adherents of an offshoot of Shiite Islam, are the only minority group barred from Arab states officially at war with Israel.

“The vast majority of Druze families are divided between Lebanon, Syria and Israel,” Nafa said, explaining that prior to Israel’s establishment in 1948, family visits and religious gatherings in all three countries were a matter of routine.

“For years, we knocked on every door [trying to do it legally]. We appealed to courts, government ministers, and organized demonstrations, asking that the Druze be given the basic right to practice their religious beliefs and meet with their family members… but it all fell on deaf ears, and we had no choice but to organize these visits even without the permission of Israeli authorities.”

In its decision to indict Nafa while exonerating the other members of his delegation, the court ruled that as a “senior political figure,” Nafa “proved in his actions that he did not leave for religious purposes alone… but to meet with Syrian officials and even secretly meet with a terror group official. As a member of Knesset, the defendant could have acted legally and democratically to obtain the exit permits, but instead left unlawfully.

“The exit of a delegation this size, after its request to leave for Syria was denied on security grounds, is meant to nullify the prohibition and make it a dead letter. It sends a message to the public that there is no need to obey it.”

Nafa claimed that the accusation of meeting Naji was “tacked on” to the indictment. He said the 20-minute meeting with the Palestinian terrorist was proven to have caused no damage to Israel’s security.

“The prosecution’s witness himself said that the Palestinian domestic situation was discussed, and when we finished drinking coffee we simply left,” he said.

During a Knesset discussion on removing his parliamentary immunity in 2010, Nafa asked then-attorney general Meni Mazuz why he was being treated differently from other Arab legislators who had visited enemy countries such as Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.

‘Israel authorities view the Druze as an asset, a flock that can only go so far and no further’

“The only difference is that I’m Druze,” Nafa said. “Israeli authorities view the Druze as an asset, a flock that can only go so far and no further. You will not consider their feelings or human rights because it’s you who decide how far their rights extend.”

For decades, he continued, Israel has been attempting to separate the Druze “from their nation” through mandatory conscription and other methods.

“Suddenly, someone comes along and says, ‘Enough. We are part of this nation,'” he said.

A limited number of Druze, mostly Syrian citizens living on the Golan Heights, are given special permission by Israel to travel to Syria, mostly in order to study.

It is not only the Jewish elite that Nafa blames for his conviction, however. He said that “part of the Druze leadership” supports the official Israeli position of banning trips to Syria, where many shrines to Druze saints exist.

“If the position of some in the Druze leadership was more robust on this issue, we could gain this right just like other denominations did. But when people do things behind your back for narrow interests, the authorities take advantage of it.”

On Tuesday, hundreds of Arab activists flocked to Beit Jann to partake in a rally organized in solidarity with Nafa. In the audience, seated just feet away from Arab MKs Masud Ganaim and Abdullah Abu Maarouf of the Joint (Arab) List, and from Greek Orthodox Archbishop Theodosius, Druze activists held Syrian national flags.

Muhammad Zidan, a doctor from Beit Jann who helped organize the rally, said that he decided to volunteer his time out of as sense that the former legislator was deeply wronged by the system.

“The Druze have started to reconnect to their Arab side, to the Arab street,” Zidan told The Times of Israel. “It’s not because of his meeting with Talal Naji that Nafa was convicted, but because he broke the confines of the box in which the authorities have tried to place all the Druze.”

Nafa said Druze Israelis will not be deterred from visiting Syria as a result of his sentence. “This trend will certainly not stop,” he said.