Israeli Arab politician prosecuted

A dangerous fracture between Israel and its one million Arab citizens opened wider yesterday when one of the country's few Arab parliamentarians, Azmi Bishara, went on trial charged with undermining the state.

After a two-hour opening session, Mr Bishara said the charges were political, the case designed not to punish him but "to shut up me and other Arab parliamentarians".

Fellow MPs voted to lift his parliamentary immunity so that he could be put on trial, the first time this has happened in Israel's 53 years of existence.

Mr Bishara is charged with helping Arabs living in Israel to visit Syria, which is classified as an enemy state. Most of them were elderly and they wanted to be reunited with relatives living as refugees.

He is also charged with two counts of "supporting a terrorist organisation", for making speeches praising Hizbullah, the militant group which forced Israel to withdraw from most of southern Lebanon last year.

In one of them, made in May this year, he said: "Lebanon, the weakest of the Arab countries, has presented a tiny model from which ... we can draw the conclusions necessary for success and victory." The remarks enraged Ariel Sharon's government.

The trial comes at an uneasy juncture for Israel and its Arab inhabitants, whom it refers to as "Israeli Arabs", a label many of them reject, preferring to be called Palestinians.

In comparison with Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza they have been relatively passive for the last 53 years, and many enjoy a better standard of living. But Israel is alarmed by their increasing politicisation by the 14 months of intifada and the backlash when its forces shot dead 13 "Israeli Arabs" during protests last year.

A supporter of Mr Bishara demonstrating yesterday outside the court in Nazareth, which has one of the biggest concentration of Arabs in Israel, said: "It is not just Azmi that is on trial but the whole 1m Palestinians living in Israel."

Mr Bishara, who founded the National Democratic Assembly party, is one of only nine Arabs in the 120-member knesset.

In his opening speech Mr Bishara's lawyer called for the charges to dropped because the law about people travelling to other countries was unclear.

The prosecutor, Yael Kochavi, told the court there was no political conspiracy, only the security implications of helping to send people "to our enemy".

The charge sheet says that Mr Bishara helped 800 people make the trip by bus via Jordan to Syria and back.

Mr Bishara, a former philosophy lecturer, said the work had been humanitarian: "It is like bringing the Red Cross to court."

Adalah, which represents Arab rights in Israel, called for the charges to be dropped, describing the contested comments as "typical" of the kind of speeches that address the political situation in the Middle East, "particularly the dangers that lie behind Sharon's government."