Israeli leaders criticise MPs who met attackers' families

Three Arab Israeli lawmakers who met relatives of Palestinians killed after carrying out attacks on Israelis faced fierce criticism from both sides of the Jewish state's political divide on Friday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he wanted to punish the politicians, while the opposition Zionist Union said the Tuesday meeting "gave a helping hand to terror".

"Members of Knesset (parliament) who go to comfort the families of terrorists who murdered Israelis do not deserve to be in the Israeli Knesset," Netanyahu said in a statement late Thursday.

"I have asked the speaker of the Knesset and the attorney general to examine what steps can be taken against them," he said.

Netanyahu and Speaker Yuli Edelstein would take the "unprecedented step" of filing personal complaints against the lawmakers with the house's ethics committee, a Knesset statement said Friday.

Lawmakers Basel Ghattas, Jamal Zahalka and Hanin Zuabi attended a meeting initiated by a Palestinian committee seeking to retrieve the bodies of attackers killed at the scene by Israeli security forces, their Balad party said.

A wave of violence since October has killed 26 Israelis, as well as an American and an Eritrean, according to an AFP count.

At the same time, 164 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, most while carrying out attacks but others during clashes and demonstrations.

Israel has returned the bodies of some attackers but is retaining others.

The remains of assailants from the occupied West Bank, for which the Israeli army is responsible, have been returned for burial in accordance with Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon's view that retaining them would further fuel tensions.

But Israel has kept the bodies of 10 Palestinians from Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, which is under the authority of Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan, who says he wants to avoid funerals becoming Palestinian political rallies.

Palestinians say withholding the bodies is a form of collective punishment.

- 'Act of revenge' -

"The non-delivery of the bodies is an act of revenge" against the families of attackers, Balad said in a statement Friday.

It said the meeting was held to retrieve bodies withheld "in contravention of all international and humanitarian laws and norms."

Israeli Arab rights group Adalah said the relatives of several Palestinians killed in attacks attended, but did not elaborate.

Balad said they included the father of Bahaa Alyan, who in October boarded a bus in Jerusalem with a friend, shooting and stabbing passengers and killing three people.

Alyan was shot dead and Israel later demolished his family home as punishment. The friend was arrested.

When it does release Palestinian bodies for burial, Israel imposes conditions such as nighttime funerals with few mourners.

Families are also sometimes made to pay a deposit of several thousand shekels (hundreds of dollars), which is lost if the funeral does not pass quietly.

Last month Alyan's father Mohammed said he would not submit to such demands, and would not bury his son outside Jerusalem.

Balad said its lawmakers had passed the families' requests on to Erdan.

Arab Israelis -- who represent about 18 percent of Israel's population -- are the descendants of Palestinians who remained on their land after the creation of Israel in 1948.

Although they are citizens of the Jewish state, they largely see themselves as Palestinians.

Yaalon, of Netanyahu's rightwing Likud party, said that the Balad lawmakers represented a "small and separatist minority among Israeli Arabs".

"The radical minority that is trying to incite and divide must be condemned and removed from our midst," he said.

Lawmaker Itzik Shmuli, of the main opposition Zionist Union, said that his party "totally condemned" such contacts.

"It's an act that simply gives a helping hand to terrorism," he told Israeli public radio Friday.

"It encourages attacks against innocent Israeli citizens."
Source: AFP