Peace activist Abie Nathan will be a free man Wednesday.
President Chaim Herzog reduced his 18-month prison sentence to six months, which will be up on Aprils 1. The president reached this decision following a request by Nathan, in which he promised to abstain in the future from breaking the law.
Nathan was sentenced last year for having had a second meeting with Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasir Arafat in Tunis after going to prison for the first.
He began serving time in November 1991.
The remaining one year of his term will be added to the 18-month suspended sentence Nathan received after his first meeting with Arafat. He served three months in prison in 1990 for that offense.
Nathan’s pledge to abide by Israeli law marks a change in his longstanding refusal to obey a law he has repeatedly said needed to be disregarded for the sake of peace. Israeli law forbids contact with the PLO.
Nathan had previously said he was willing to go to jail if he had to because the law frustrates peace efforts.
Herzog’s amnesty was hailed by the left-wing bloc in the Knesset, though Nathan’s supporters thought the commutation should have been granted months ago.
The law Nathan violated should be repealed, a spokesman for the bloc said.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
