Police say MK wanted over phone smuggling unreachable for questioning
Public security minister says Ghattas ‘has apparently gone underground’; Joint List chief urges patience in probe
Joint (Arab) List MK Basel Ghattas, suspected of smuggling cellphones to Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, has fallen off the grid since accusations against him surfaced, and police said Monday he may be avoiding their attempts to summon him for questioning.
Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has authorized police to question Ghattas under caution for alleged security breaches.
But Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said police had been unable to get hold of Ghattas since the morning.
“He has apparently gone underground, he and his assistant have turned off their phones,” Erdan told Channel 2.
The channel confirmed that Ghattas’s phone was either busy or disconnected when they tried to call.
An attempt by The Times of Israel to reach Ghattas spokesman Tareq Khateeb went straight to voicemail.
While police are usually able to locate suspects by tracking their phones, Ghattas’s immunity as a Knesset member prevented them from such action.
Erdan noted that, while Ghattas could simply be huddling with legal advisers before contacting police to set up his questioning, “the facts are that police have been unable to reach him or his assistants since the morning.”
The minister warned that should Ghattas continue to avoid law enforcement officials, “all police capabilities to locate [wanted persons] will be used.”
The founder of Ghattas’s Balad political party fled Israel in 2007, after suspicions surfaced that he may have passed sensitive information to Hezbollah during the 2006 Second Lebanon War.
On Sunday, police said Ghattas was suspected of passing some 15 cell phones to inmates serving sentences for national security offenses in Ketziot prison, drawing a flurry of condemnation from fellow lawmakers.
Channel 2 News reported Monday that Ghattas was also suspected of handing “intelligence information” to one of two prisoners.
Police sources have said the evidence against Ghattas is substantial.
The head of the Joint (Arab) List acknowledged Monday that the accusations against Ghattas were “very serious,” but cautioned that the case should be handled by authorities and not by politicians, and noted that Ghattas should be considered innocent until proven guilty.
“The accusations leveled against MK Basel Ghattas in the media are very serious, and for this reasons must be evaluated by an investigation, and not in a drumhead court-martial led by Knesset members,” Ayman Odeh said in a statement. “The presumption of innocence is the right of every person until proven guilty, and thus the bid to prematurely pass judgement on Ghattas is prohibited.”
Odeh claimed the suspicions had led to a “cynical and ugly attempt to make use of the situation in order to incite against the entire Arab public, and to attempt to hinder the rights and immunity of Knesset members.”
In the wake of the allegations against Ghattas, Environment Minister Ze’ev Elkin on Monday started a petition among lawmakers to have the Joint List lawmaker expelled from the Knesset immediately, without waiting for criminal proceedings.
“Let us put an end to the abuse of parliamentary immunity in order to aid terror,” Elkin tweeted. “I ask MKs to join my initiative to expel MK Basel Ghattas under the impeachment law.”
President Reuven Rivlin said Monday that Ghattas should be stripped of parliamentary immunity and punished severely — if the allegations are proven true.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also called for a severe punishment should the allegations turn out to be true, and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman called the Joint List, of which Balad is a part, a party of “spies and traitors.”
Meretz party head Zehava Galon also called on Ghattas to resign, branding his alleged crimes “extremely severe.”
She compared the Arab MK to Jewish Home MK Nissan Slomiansky, suspected of sexual offenses, who announced on Sunday that he has suspended himself from the chairmanship of the Knesset Law, Justice and Constitution Committee.
“Just like Slomiansky, [Ghattas] should go home,” Galon said. “However, while the public demand for an MK to resign is legitimate, in these two cases the use of the impeachment law is wrong.”
One of the prisoners that Ghattas is alleged to have met with is Walid Daka, who was sentenced to 37 years for the 1984 abduction and murder of 19-year-old IDF soldier Moshe Tamam.
Tamam’s mother, Gila, said on Monday that “any lawmaker who helps those who killed my son has blood on his hands.”
According to a law that was passed in June, the impeachment process can be initiated if 70 Knesset members — 10 of whom must be from the opposition — file a complaint with the Knesset speaker against any lawmaker who supports an armed struggle against Israel or incites to racial hatred.
The Knesset House Committee would then debate the complaint before clearing it with a three-quarter majority in the committee. The motion to dismiss the lawmaker would then be sent to the plenum, where, if 90 of the 120 Knesset members vote in favor, the MK would be ousted. The deposed lawmaker could then appeal the decision with the Supreme Court.
Ghattas is a member of the Balad Party, which is part of the Knesset’s Joint (Arab) List and has three of their 13 seats. At the time, the impeachment bill was being discussed Joint (Arab) List chairman Odeh threatened to quit the Knesset if the bill was signed into law.
