The president of Tel Aviv district court, Uri Goren postponed on Monday the ruling whether to approve the administrative detention of Tali Fahima, an Israeli peace activist arrested on August 10. Fahima will remain in prison until then.
The Israeli security suspects that Fahima aided the leader of the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Jenin, Zakaria Zubeidi, to carry out attacks against Israeli targets.
During the discussion , the state’s representative, lawyer Anar Helman, charged that Fahima intended to carry out attacks against Israeli targets together with Palestinian resistance operatives and to obtain weapons from them.
Helman added that Fahima could not be indicted based on the investigation against her because that would entail revealing secret information.
Fahima’s attorney, Smadar Ben-Natan, argued that the military establishment’s fears were unfounded. Ben-Natan said that Fahima was a political activist and did not belong to any organization, as opposed to others placed in administrative detention.
‘The Shin Beit is trying to educate me, sweep me under the carpet and hide me.’ Fahima told reporters at the end of the discussion in court.
Meanwhile, around 30 leftist protestors demonstrated outside the court carrying signs against the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Sunday protesting against the administrative detention against Fahima.
One woman carrying a sign calling Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a murderer was arrested on incitement charges.
Fahimas administrative detention order was debated among right-wing and left-wing Israeli officials.
National Union MK Aryeh Eldad said he believed there was enough evidence to put Fahima on trial without revealing intelligence sources. Yahad leader Yossi Beilin said Fahima should be put on trial only for illegally entering Palestinian-controlled Area A, but claimed that there is no justification for an administrative detention.
Justice Minister Yosef Lapid adopted the security establishment’s position that Fahima should be placed in administrative detention because the evidence against her is extremely severe. Lapid said that revealing the evidence would disclose intelligence sources.
Since the beginning of the second Intifada, Israel passed a law preventing Israeli nationals to enter the Palestinian controlled areas, defined in Oslo agreement as zones ‘A’.
Several Israelis were arrested in the past few years for breaking this military order.
Administrative detention has been widely used against Palestinians in both the first and the second Intifadas, when there were no clear evidence of involvement of the accused in alleged charges or when the only witnesses could reveal secret agents of the Shin Bet.
According to the order, Fahima will serve four months’ administrative detention in keeping with Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz’s decision at the end of last week. Fahima will remain in detention until January 4, 2005.
Tali Fahima, Photo by (AP)
