The MKs flew to Tripoli via Amman, along with Libya’s ambassador to Jordan, and are meeting Sunday with Libya’s eccentric dictator Muammar Gaddafi, the first time Israeli legislators have set foot in the country. The Arab MKs previously were not able to travel there because Libya would not recognize their Israeli passports. MK Talab El-Sana said the Israeli delegation’s arrival was a “breakthrough.”
Yisrael Beiteinu MK Moshe Matalon commented, “I suggest the Arab MKs stay in Libya with Gaddafi," who currently is the rotating president of the Arab League. "Israelis will not shed a tear if they stay there with one of the worst Israel-haters. Time after time Arab MKs prove where their loyalty is, and the nation must reach the obvious conclusion from their visit to a hostile state.”
Arab MK Mohammed Barakeh, who often has been accused of inciting Arabs to violence, said it is “natural” for him and his colleagues to visit Libya. The legislators are staying in a luxurious beachside hotel in Tripoli, and the local scenery prompted Barakeh to compare one beachside site with Akko (Acre).
Barakeh has often condemned Israel for allegedly denying rights to Arabs throughout Israel, including Israeli citizens. Bar-Ilan University’s Dr. Mordechai Kedar noted the contradiction of the Arab MKs visiting a country that denies civil rights to its citizens.
He said that the Arab legislators should “remain in Libya and sit around the campfire with Gaddafi.” He also called on Israeli authorities to revoke the citizenship of the legislators’ entourage from Israel.
Knesset Law Committee chairman David Rotem, also of Yisrael Beiteinu, stated, “Their visit to a country that identifies with Israel’s worst enemies is a slap in the face to Israeli citizens and again reveals their lack of loyalty” to Israel. “This visit is a direct continuation of the demonstration that they held on Independence Day with hundreds of Arab citizens.”
Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi hosted six Arab members of the Israeli Knesset and forty other Arab public figures from Israel Sunday. He spoke before them for more than an hour inside a giant Bedouin tent in the city of Sirat.
MK Orlev noted that a law which he had initiated, and that was passed in the previous Knesset, determines that a candidate for Knesset who illegally visited an enemy state in the seven years preceding the election will be seen as having supported armed struggle against Israel and disqualified from running.
Orlev sent a letter to Judge Ayala Procaccia, the Chairwoman of the Central Elections Committee for elections to the 19th Knesset, and asked that the committee meet soon to decide that the participating MKs and the parties that they represent are disqualified from running for another term.
MK David Rotem (Israel Our Home), Chairman of the Knesset's Constitution Law and Justice Committee, said in a discussion of the MKs' trip earlier in the day that Libya is not formally considered an enemy state.
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