Peace activist Abie Nathan returned to Israel on Sunday from his latest meeting with Yasir Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and was detained as soon as he landed.
Police from the serious crimes unit took Nathan from his plane, which had just arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport from Paris. He was escorted to an unmarked car after talking with his lawyer.
Nathan had said from Paris before embarking that he expected to be arrested for his meetings with the PLO chief, which violate an Israeli law forbidding meeting with members of terrorist organizations, the PLO specifically.
It is not known if he was charged with anything. Israeli police officials had said he would be “questioned” on arrival.
A small band of his supporters demonstrated on Nathan’s behalf outside the terminal, from which reporters were blocked.
Nathan faces three months of one suspended prison sentence for a 1989 meeting with Arafat and a trial in September for another meeting with the PLO leader. His latest encounter with Arafat took place in Tunis at the end of June.
He served four months of the first sentence last year. Nathan left to meet with Arafat after holding a life-endangering hunger fast to protest the Israeli law that prohibits such meetings.
Before leaving Paris, Nathan disclosed that he had applied for a visa to go to Yemen, where he intended to hold “meaningful political talks” and visit the remnants of the Jewish community there. But the visa had not been forthcoming and he apparently tired of waiting.
Nathan also applied in vain for visas to visit Jordan and Sudan.
The peace activist predicted, in a July 7 telephone interview from Paris, that he would face a “witch hunt” upon his return.
But he had said he had no regrets about attending Arafat’s news conference in Tunis last month. Nathan submitted 12 questions, to which the PLO leader replied last week.
The answers were faxed to leading Israeli newspapers on stationery whose letterhead read “State of Palestine.” Arab affairs experts here said there was little new in the responses.
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