An Israeli court has ordered Palestinian journalist and political activist Abed Abou Shhadeh to remain in custody until Sunday, November 8, days after security forces arrested him in an overnight raid on his home in Jaffa.
Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court issued the ruling on Wednesday, after police requested an eight-day extension of his detention on suspicion of "contact with a foreign agent". Adalah, a legal rights group that is part of his defence team, said it would appeal the decision.
Abou Shhadeh, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, hosts the al-Midan podcast for the Arab48 website and appeared as an analyst on Al Jazeera during coverage of Israel's recent election. Israeli media reported that his arrest followed an interview he conducted in Qatar with the Palestinian intellectual Azmi Bishara, a former Knesset member.
His lawyers say the interrogation has focused solely on that conversation, which covered the Israeli election campaign and Palestinians and remains publicly available. At the hearing, the defence argued that Bishara, a former head of the Balad party, is not a foreign agent and that interviewing him cannot give rise to suspicion of a criminal offence. According to the Israeli daily Israel Hayom, the lawyers told the court that Abou Shhadeh had worked as a journalist for about six years and conducted the interview as part of that work, describing it as "not a secret meeting". They added that investigators already hold his phone and computer, so there was no real risk of him obstructing the investigation.
Speaking on Al Jazeera, Adalah founder Hassan Jabareen said Abou Shhadeh had been charged with receiving money from foreign agents in order to support Arab Israeli voters, and dismissed the accusation as fabricated. "There is no evidence that [Abou Shhadeh] received money from anyone," he said. "They searched his house and found nothing."
Arab48 reported that about 15 security officers, some of them masked, raided Abou Shhadeh's home overnight on Tuesday, confiscating electronic devices and books in front of his two children. Police initially refused to tell his family where he was being held, and his lawyer later discovered he was detained at a Shin Bet intelligence facility in Petah Tikva.
The arrest comes a week after an Israeli election in which no party emerged as the winner, leaving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bloc and the opposition led by Gadi Eisenkot needing to form a coalition with smaller parties in order to govern. Arab-led parties made record gains, making their collective alliance a candidate for coalition partner. Jabareen told Al Jazeera the detention was politically driven, saying the aim was to show that Arab voters and political parties are illegal so they cannot enter a coalition with Eisenkot.
Adalah lawyer Hadeel Abu Salih said in a statement: "This is not a criminal investigation, it is a campaign to silence Palestinian journalists and political activists. The police are sending a message to the entire Palestinian public in Israel: Even a public conversation with a political figure can land you in a detention cell."
Dozens of Palestinian and Jewish activists protested outside the court on Wednesday to demand Abou Shhadeh's release, and rights advocates have described the arrest as part of a broader campaign of intimidation against Palestinian citizens of Israel following the election. David Zini, the chief of the Shin Bet security agency, has reportedly also sought to question Arab party leaders Mansour Abbas, Ahmad Tibi and Sami Abu Shehadeh, the Balad leader and a relative of the detained journalist.
