Israel extends detention of Palestinian journalist Abed Abou Shhadeh

An Israeli court has extended the detention of Palestinian journalist and political activist Abed Abou Shhadeh who was arrested this week.

Abou Shhadeh was detained after Israeli security forces raided his home in Jaffa overnight on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court ruled that he will remain in custody until Sunday, November 8.

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 the recent Israeli election.

Police had requested an eight-day extension to his detention on suspicion of “contact with a foreign agent”. The legal rights group Adalah, which is part of his defence team, said it would appeal.

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. Jabareen dismissed the charges as fabricated.

“There is no evidence that [Abou Shhadeh] received money from anyone,” he told Al Jazeera. “They searched his house and found nothing.”

About 15 security officers, some of them masked, had raided Abou Shhadeh’s home overnight on Tuesday, confiscating electronic devices and books in front of his two children.

Arab48 reported that police initially refused to tell his family where he was being held. His lawyer later discovered he was detained at a Shin Bet intelligence facility in Petah Tikva.

“All of this story [is] part of the campaign by the head of [the Shin Bet] and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu who want to show that Arab voters in Israel are not kosher, are illegal,” Jabareen said.

No party emerged as the winner in Israel’s election last week, with Netanyahu’s bloc and the opposition, led by Gadi Eisenkot, now needing to form a coalition with smaller parties to be able to govern. Arab-led parties made record gains this year, making their collective alliance a candidate for coalition partner.

“The motive behind all of this is the election,” Jabareen told Al Jazeera. “It’s to show that Arab voters and political parties are illegal, so they can’t make a coalition with Eisonkot.”

Israeli media reported that Abou Shhadeh was arrested after taking part in an interview in Qatar with the Palestinian intellectual Azmi Bishara.  Abou Shhadeh’s lawyers say his interrogation focused solely on the interview he conducted with the former Knesset member.

“This is not a criminal investigation, it is a campaign to silence Palestinian journalists and political activists,” Adalah lawyer Hadeel Abu Salih said in a statement.

“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.”

According to Adalah, police raised no allegations against Abou Shhadeh other than the interview, 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 Arab-Israei party Balad, 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, lawyers also told the court that Abou Shhadeh had worked as a journalist for about six years and conducted the interview as part of the work. They said it was “not a secret meeting” and that investigators already held Abou Shhadeh phone and computer, so there was no real risk of him obstructing the investigation.

Dozens of Palestinian and Jewish activists protested outside the court on Wednesday to demand his release.

Rights advocates have described the arrest as part of a campaign of intimidation against Palestinian citizens of Israel following the election.

David Zini, chief of the Shin Bet, Israel’s security agency, has reportedly sought to question Arab party leaders Mansour Abbas, Ahmad Tibi and Sami Abu Shehadeh, the Balad leader and a relative of the detained journalist.