Ghattas: 'Nothing to hide' From Police

Jerusalem, 20 December, 2016 (TPS) -- Israel Police said Tuesday that MK Basel Ghattas was interrogated on suspicions of fraud, breach of the trust and entering illegal objects into a prison.

Upon reporting for interrogation at the Lahav 433 crime fighting unit, the Joint List MK stated he had “nothing to hide” and dismissed accusations that he used his parliamentary immunity to smuggle phones to Palestinian security prisoners. He also rejected out-of-hand accusations made by Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan on Monday that Ghattas “might have gone underground” when the Israeli police failed to contact him during the day.

Ghattas also called the investigation “another chapter in the political witch-hunt against leaders of the Arab community,” but some analysts considered supporters of Arab rights in Israel disagreed.

“To call this investigation a ‘political witch-hunt’ is uncalled for,” stated Dr. Amir Fuchs, a researchear at the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), told Tazpit Press Service (TPS).

“The suspicions against MK Ghattas, should they turn out to be true, would certainly be a grave violation of Israel’s criminal code, and the investigation is therefore legitimate,” he argued.

In the political arena, the investigation against Ghattas triggered several parliamentary initiatives.

Minister of Culture and Sport Miri Regev asked Attorney General Avichai Mandleblit to prevent MKs from visiting security prisoners without having them undergo body searches. She also linked the Ghattas with an espionage cases invoking  he Bishara missiles case and Hanin Zoabi’s presence on the Mavi Marmara protest ship in 2010.

“The actions of MK Ghattas are a cynical exploitation of the Israeli democracy in the service of terrorism,” she stated in a Facebook post.  

Minister of Jerusalem Affairs and Environmental Protection Ze’ev Elkin also focused on Ghattas and suggested the latter could be the first target of the Impeachment Law which signed into law last July and which gives legislators the ability to remove an MK from parliament for incitement against racism or for supporting armed struggle against the state.

Dr. Fuchs strongly opposes this move.

“As opposed to the police investigation, it would be right to categorize the Impeachment Law as a political witch-hunt, in my view. It represents a net political endeavor,” Fuchs argued.  

“The Ghattas case demonstrates the inherent problems with this law. There is an evident harm done to the separation of powers. The Knesset does not have any way to investigate allegations, make a prosecutorial decision on an indictment  or determine a verdict so severe as the suspension of parliamentary status,” he continued.

Fuchs also criticized Prime Minister Netanyahu’s criticism of Yesh Atid MK Lapid as a “leftist” when the latter refused to sign on the impeachment request sheet.  

“This statement proves the assumption that we are not dealing here with a legal issue but a political one: Everyone with us [the right-wing] must be in favor, and everyone who is against is necessarily on the other end of the political spectrum, and therefore veering off-topic,” Fuchs concluded.