Mofaz threatens Arafat, again

Monday, September 06, 2004

Mofaz also defended his signed order sending Tali Fahima, a Jerusalem woman in her 20s into administrative detention because, he said, she presented ‘a clear a present danger’ because of her avowed friendship with Zakriya Zubeidi, the commander of Tanzim in Jenin. Zubeidi is thorn in the Israeli defense establishment’s side, since reporters routinely meet with the man who is believed behind several particularly bloody terror attacks in the West Bank and Israel, and who routinely says he will only put down his weapons when he is killed – or Israel leaves all the territories. Fahima, who comes from a Likud family – indeed, she says she voted for Sharon in 2001 – went to Jenin for a first hand look at the situation there last year and since then has become very friendly with Zubeidi. She has been very open about the friendship, which upsets the defense establishment even more.

The use of administrative detention orders was immediately propelled to high on the agenda, and an odd alliance of Right and Left wing politicians formed at the Knesset who condemned the use of the arrests-without-trial rule that was introduced by the British during their mandate over the Holy Land. Politicians on the Right are afraid that the defense minister will make wholesale use of administrative detention as the disengagement approaches, to neutralize the leadership of the opposition to the evacuation of Gaza and the northern West Bank around Jenin. Rightists such as Noam Federman, a Kachnik based in Hebron, have been held under such orders, but Fahima is the first woman to ever be held in administrative detention because of what the security services say is information they have about her participation in a plot to conduct a terror attack inside Israel. She, through her lawyer, denies it, and argues that the detention is punishment for her unusual vow to serve as a ‘living shield’ to protect Zubeidi. The security services say they cannot prosecute in court because it would harm their intelligence sources. Mofaz pointed out the detention is subject to court supervision and ‘just as detention can be extended, so it can be shortened.’

But it was the aftermath of the Beslan disaster that pre-occupied the press. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was slated for talks today with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who will propose unprecedented anti-terrorism security cooperation with Russia, including sharing of sensitive intelligence data. Israel is also expected to offer to accept a significant number of child victims of the hostage siege for rehabilitation. On Sunday, Lavrov and Sharon independently called for an international anti-terrorist alliance. Lavrov is on a swing through the Middle East planned long before the Beslan tragedy. Even before Beslan, he told Haaretz last week for pre-visit interview ‘Our countries are both in the crosshair of terrorism … To fight this universal evil in a vigorous way is one of the areas where we can and should unite our efforts. During the forthcoming visit, we'll sign a memorandum on the deepening of cooperation between our foreign ministries, which provides the framework for the functioning of an anti-terrorism working group.’

Woman Crucified # 13 by Silvia Rosenberg, mixed media on recycled paper, 20x30 cm.

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