Prominent Islamic Brotherhood terrorist Mahmoud Abu-Tir of eastern Jerusalem has been ordered to leave Israel, on the backdrop of his refusal to resign from the Hamas legislature.
Abu-Tir, famous for his orange beard and less so for his attempt to poison Israel's water supplies, was recently released from four years in prison. He has spent most of the last 25 years in Israeli jails for his terrorism-related activities, but his last prison stint was an attempt to use him as a negotiating card for the release of Gilad Shalit. The Free Gilad Shalit task force objected publicly to Abu-Tir's release.
Abu-Tir and three other Hamas men, all from eastern Jerusalem, were detained for interrogation today, following a Supreme Court decision to this effect. The subject of their questioning will be their membership in the outlawed Hamas legislature.
The Israel Security Agency (Shabak) agents confiscated the blue Israeli ID cards granted to Jerusalem Arabs and told them that they must leave Israeli sovereign territory by the beginning of next month. If not, they were told, they will be arrested.
MK Michael Ben-Ari (National Union), before Abu-Tir's release last week, wrote an urgent letter to Defense Minister Ehud Barak, asking that Abu-Tir be kept in prison in administrative detention. "In any normal country," Ben-Ari wrote, "Abu-Tir would have found himself deep in the ground, or at least in prison for life."
Abu-Tir was convicted in the past of directing terror activities against Israel, including the attempted poisoning in the early 1990s of Israel's water supplies and running Hamas's military arm, the Izz ad-Din al-Kassam Brigades. After his release from prison in 2005, prior to Palestinian Authority elections, he was recruited by Hamas to be one of the leaders of its national electoral list.