Knesset bans lawmakers from visiting security prisoners

Lawmakers on Tuesday issued a blanket ban on Knesset members visiting prisoners serving time for terrorism and other security crimes.

The vote to institute the ban took place at a Knesset House Committee meeting dealing with allegations that MK Basel Ghattas (Joint List) smuggled miniature cellphones and coded intelligence information to Palestinian prisoners serving time for terror acts at Ketziot Prison south of Beersheba.

The Shin Bet security service recommended the ban, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said at the meeting.

Erdan said he had spoken to Shin Bet chief Nadav Argaman and “as far as he is concerned, a blanket ban on all meetings between MKs and security prisoners should be instituted,” the minister informed the committee.

The ban could only come from the Knesset itself as lawmakers enjoy parliamentary immunity from such restrictions by any other law enforcement bodies. The ban applies to all prisoners held on security offenses, whether Palestinian or Israeli.

Ghattas was questioned on the suspicions Tuesday at the Lahav 433 serious crimes unit in Lod. Specifically, he is accused of smuggling expensive miniature cellphones and messages written in code during a visit Sunday with two Palestinian security prisoners at Ketziot Prison. One of the two prisoners, both of whom are members of Fatah, is serving a 37-year term for murder.

Some coalition lawmakers have demanded that Ghattas, an MK from the Balad party, part of the Joint List faction, be stripped of the immunity he enjoys as a member of Knesset and be put on trial. One MK warned that Ghattas could bring a weapon into the Knesset, where it could be used for an assassination.

Asked about the case Tuesday, Erdan denounced Ghattas. “This is a member of Knesset who just three-four months ago held a moment of silence for the memory of the murderers in the recent terror wave in Jerusalem, who joins flotillas of identification with Gaza, who calls [former president] Shimon Peres the greatest of war criminals, who sneaks onto the Temple Mount just to provoke. It won’t be such a disaster if he isn’t in the Knesset — even if he isn’t convicted [in the current case],” the minister said.

As he entered the police building Tuesday, Ghattas told reporters, “I will come out with my head held high, and in the end it will turn out that they made a mountain out of a molehill.”

Calling the accusations “a political witch hunt,” he said, “We have become accustomed to questioning like this — it is all just to harm our struggle [for the Palestinian cause].”