Palestinian prisoners turn to smuggled Egyptian SIM cards – report
Prisons in southern Israel said to see growing use of networks from across the border as inmates bid to bypass phone restrictions
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli jails are increasingly using Egyptian SIM cards in their cellphones to get around Israel Prisons Service efforts to block or screen calls, Army Radio reported Thursday.
Use of the cards is particularly common at the Ketziot and Nafha prisons in the south of Israel, whose proximity to the Egyptian border ensures good reception to Egypt’s cellular networks.
The radio report cited “sources close to the prisoners.”
The report, which did not indicate the scale of the purported use of Egyptian SIMs, illustrated the ongoing challenge faced by the Prisons Service in clamping down on smuggling to prisoners.
In April, former Arab Joint List lawmaker Basel Ghattas was sentenced to two years in prison as part of a plea deal for smuggling cellphones and notes to convicted Palestinian terrorists in Israeli jails.
He is scheduled to begin his sentence on July 2, according to the court ruling.
Ghattas came under criminal investigation after being caught on prison surveillance video passing envelopes to Palestinian security prisoners in January.
Police said that the MK exploited his position as a member of Knesset — who cannot be subjected to a body search — during a visit to Ketziot Prison last year, where he met with Walid Daka, a Palestinian prisoner serving a 37-year sentence for the 1984 abduction and murder of 19-year-old IDF soldier Moshe Tamam. The MK also met with Basel Ben Sulieman Bezre, who is serving a 15-year sentence on a terror conviction.
Ghattas consistently denied the allegations against him, saying that authorities were pursuing him because he was an Arab MK, but had to contend with video footage that appeared to show him smuggling the cellphones into the prison.
