MK who joined Gaza flotilla reprimanded by Knesset panel

The Knesset’s Ethics Committee decided on Wednesday to reprimand Joint (Arab) List MK Basel Ghattas over his participation in a recent protest flotilla to Gaza.

The committee ruled that Ghattas had broken the Knesset’s ethical code, but accepted his testimony that he funded the trip privately and was not financed by any foreign entities.

Ghattas decided independently to join last month’s four-vessel flotilla to Gaza, and in interviews before it left on its route boasted that he had “warned” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to use force against the activists on board.

One boat in the flotilla, the Marianne, was intercepted at the end of June, long before reaching the coastal territory, and was escorted by the Israeli Navy to the port of Ashdod. Its non-Israeli participants were deported the following day. The other three boats turned back earlier in the voyage.

After finding out that Ghattas was aboard the Marianne, which led the flotilla, several Knesset members had sought to suspend Ghattas from parliamentary activity, but the Ethics Committee, headed by Shas MK Yitzhak Vaknin, sufficed with a strong censure Wednesday.

Leading the effort to suspend Ghattas were Likud ministers Ze’ev Elkin and Miri Regev, as well as the chairman of the Knesset House Committee, Likud MK David Bitan.

The committee noted that Ghattas has a clean slate when it came to his ethical conduct as a lawmaker.