Israeli authorities have freed Palestinian journalist Abed Abou Shhadeh after holding him for five days without bringing any charges against him.
Speaking on Sunday following his release, Abou Shhadeh described his detention as one of the “political measures” aimed not only at him “but to intimidate Arab society as a whole”. He said the right answer was to “reaffirm among ourselves that we are on the right side, that our path is the path of truth”, and confirmed he intends to keep working as a journalist.
Abou Shhadeh was detained on Tuesday on suspicion of “contact with a foreign agent” and held at a Shin Bet intelligence facility in Petah Tikva, on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.
According to Adalah, the legal rights group that forms part of his defence team, he was suspected of accepting money from foreign sources to support Arab voters in Israel. The allegation surfaced after Abou Shhadeh, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, spoke on the al-Midan podcast for the Arab48 website and appeared as an analyst on Al Jazeera.
His legal counsel, Adalah human rights lawyer Hadeel Abu Salih, said the subjects he discussed were similar to those routinely covered by Israeli media outlets. “It was obvious from the first day, from Thursday, that the police doesn’t have, any evidence in this context,” she said, explaining that the entire suspicion rested on a public conversation he held with Palestinian intellectual Azmi Bishara while in Qatar.
“This is now being criminalised only because the speakers are Palestinians,” Abu Salih said. “Or when Palestinians are asking to analyse their political reality. The Israeli system turned that discussion and analysis into a criminal suspicion.” She added that the authorities “were trying to say that he’s not a journalist, that he’s a political counsel.”
Abu Salih said Abou Shhadeh was arrested in the middle of the night on Tuesday, when 15 Israeli security officers raided his home in Jaffa and seized personal belongings, including electronic devices and books, in front of his two children.
Adalah founder Hassan Jabareen told Al Jazeera the five-day detention was “part of the campaign against the votes of the Arabs and Palestinians in Israel”, saying Israel wanted to “delegitimise their votes” through the claims levelled against the journalist.
“He travelled to Doha as a journalist .. he came back as a journalist. But he was arrested as an Arab political person,” Jabareen said. “They tried to use him in order to say that Arabs use illegal [means] in their political participation in the Israeli elections.”
