Four leftist Knesset members are going to Paris for a conference to be attended by members of the Palestine Liberation Organization, despite threats of criminal prosecution when they return home.
They are Ora Namir and Arieh Eliav of the Labor Party, Yair Tsaban of Mapam and Shulamit Aloni of the Citizens Rights Movement.
Three of them are scheduled to leave Tuesday. One is already in Paris. The conference, at the French Senate, will be hosted by Gaullists Jacques Chaban-Delmas and Simone Veil.
Thirty-two Knesset members from Likud and parties further to the right tried to prevent their colleagues’ departure. They petitioned the ministers of justice and police and the attorney general last week to bar them from leaving the country.
Failing that, they are expected to demand that the four be prosecuted under the 1948 prevention of terrorism ordinance.
Israeli law forbids citizens from contact with members of terrorist organizations. But it has rarely been enforced against Knesset members.
The attorney general, for example, did not ask to have Hadash Communist Charlie Biton or Mohammed Miari of the Progressive List for Peace stripped of their parliamentary immunity after they met with PLO chief Yasir Arafat a year ago.
Instead, he cited court rulings that a Knesset member acting in the framework of his duties should not be prosecuted.
But Labor hawks are uneasy. They have demanded that the party’s Knesset faction meet soon to discuss the issue of its members meeting with PLO representatives.
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